Australian Court OKs International Net-Defamation Suit

Proud to be unAustralian writes: "Australian IT reports that a landmark court ruling puts Internet publishers around the world on notice that they can be sued under Australia's strict defamation laws -- and effectively in any of the 190 nations where defamation proceedings can be brought." entrippy contributes a link to another article on the case running at The Age.

Reader Diabolus notes that "it is unlikely that this same success would have occurred under American law. This occurred despite the site being hosted in America. It seems that RMS' nightmare 'Harm from the Hague' has come to pass even before that treaty is signed."

Comments

Jurisdictional treaties now!

[davey23sol]

Okay.. with the Dmitry case and the French Nazi memorabilia case and now this case, I think it's time to make a big push for a new international treaty, akin to a geneva convention or time zone agreement. Everyone needs to get together and decide how and if certain laws apply in Internet situations. This is getting just plane out of hand. If we keep going in this direction, the Talliban is going to indict people because they write about premarital sex on their web pages or people will start getting arrested in China because they have written something anti-communist in the past.

I don't understand why the "we're a sovereign nation" crowd, headed by lead blowhard Jesse Helms, isn't up in arms about this. This seems to the be ultimate internationalization of law...

Re:Do you have to be Austrailian to file suit?

[Perrin-GoldenEyes]

Important to note, though, that as far as I can tell, it's not actually a LAW. It's a legal precedent. If somebody in Oz tried to sue me (a private citizen) for defamation, I could probably just tell them to go to Hell. As long as I didn't ever want to go to Oz, that is. I doubt the US government (bastards, though they can be) would enforce such a ruling. I just sit in my nice cozy apartment and laugh at them. Their cops don't have jurisdiction in the US. So long as ours don't help out (seems unlikely...got to keep up pretences of free speech), I'm perfectly safe. Still sucks for large corporations who do business down there and have to be accountable.

Re:Lets pull out of the UN

[greenrd]

Expansion of the World Court's power.

So, you're in favour of letting US war criminals like Henry Kissinger get off scott free? Oh wait, you don't understand what I'm talking about do you - forget it.

And thus you, or others play right into their hand

[FreeUser]

I think it's time to make a big push for a new international treaty, akin to a geneva convention

Our fundamental rights to freedom of expression, speech, freedom from search and seizure, etc. are under concerted attack from numerous directions at the state, federal, and international level. At the international level this is happening on at least two fronts, with multinational treaty groups/trade regions (think European Union and NAFTA) and global treaties (think WTO and WIPO). It is quite likely that a part of the strategy to get everyone to knuckle under the kind of draconian world-wide laws those whom WIPO and the WTO represent desire (i.e. the corporations of Earth) is to deliberately make the current situation so untenable that we will demand something, anything, to replace the current situation.

How better to achieve that than to have every Tom, Dick, and Harry (e.g. California, France, and Australia) claim world-wide jurusdiction, such that the world's lowest common denominator (e.g. the Taliban) comes to impact each of our lives? Then a worldwide, standardized DMCA might look inviting ... even though the rules are draconian, at least then we know what they are. And thus we all fall right into their trap, giving up our rights for a little dubious certaintly and playing right into their hands. What is worse, from the way the US Constitution is written it is entirely possible that international agreements, once ratified by congress, may in fact supercede constitutional protections (this is a highly debated point, but alas not the cut-and-dried your rights are protected from such things most of us like to believe ... and reading the constitution doesn't shed much light on the issue, so in the end the interpretations of our increasingly unreliable Supreme Court will likely be all that stands between us and the Abyss).

Farfetched? A couple of years ago, before the DeCSS and Dmitry cases I might have thought so. But in todays climate I not only find it a reasonably possible scenerio, but a likely one.