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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."
I can see it now. The Taliban will come out suing millions of AOL users for showing their faces in public.
NO TOUCH MONKEY!
The following is a quote from that site:
:)
"...elections in Australia are held under a system which does
not allow you to freely express your will because you are required, by law,
to attend a polling booth on election day and have your name marked off
the electoral roll. There is no compulsory voting in Australia as you do not
need to mark the ballot paper. You can put it, unmarked, into the ballot
box. However, the fact that the parliament demands that you be
somewhere on a chosen election day, under threat of fine or jail,
demonstrates that they demand your obedience with menaces. That is
not freedom that is dictatorship."
--http://www.ozscan.net.au/mandate/
1) "...you are required, by law, to attend a polling booth on election day
and have your name marked off the electoral roll."
Getting your name marked off the electoral roll is not only so the AEC can
find out who voted and who didn't so it can fine the latter. It is also:
a) to discourage electors from voting more than once; and
b) to ensure that those who do vote in a particular electorate are
qualified to do so
(Without that precaution you might end up with the sort of stacking that
goes on in the ALP. For example, busloads of the party faithful being
whizzed in from outside a crucial marginal electorate to vote.)
2) I'm not sure quite what you mean when you claim that being "required,
by law, to attend a polling booth on election day" does "not allow you to
freely express your will".
In what way does requiring you to attend a polling booth inhibits you
"freely express[ing] your will"?
After all, the purpose of holding an election (or a referendum, for that
matter) is to allow electors to cast a vote. That is where the "will" of
the electorate is expressed. Compulsory attendance plays no roll in how
that will is expressed.
You are not required to vote for a particualr candidate or to reveal who
you voted for.
What exactly do you mean?
3) "...the fact that the parliament demands that you be somewhere on a
chosen election day, under threat of fine or jail, demonstrates that they
demand your obedience with menaces. That is not freedom that is
dictatorship."
Define "freedom" and "dictatorship".
Kids within a certain age bracket have to attend school or face getting
dragged there willy-nilly by the local truant officer. Why is that
different from grownups being required to attend a polling booth?
If you earn over a certain income threshold you are required to pay income
tax. You might be able to reduce the amount you pay by making use of
various deductions, tax shelters, and so forth, but if the tax office
issues you with an assessment which requires you to pay a tax bill you
have to pay that bill or risk court action--not to mention fines which are
a good deal heftier and more onerous than the $20 fine you get from the
AEC for not voting.
4) "...under threat of fine or jail..."
AFAIK there are no gaol terms for not attending.
You might, of course, get tossed in gaol for contempt of court or being a
repeat offender (ie you keep staying away, they keep fining you, and you
keep not paying), but the same thing would happen if you treated speeding
tickets, parking fines, or a bill from the tax office in a similarly
cavalier fashion.
BTW, the fine for not voting in federal elections is $20 ($50 if you get
taken to court). If the threat of a $20 fine makes Australia a
"dictatorship" you clearly have no idea what a real dictatorship is!
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...
"Yes.. no matter what the culture, folk dancing is stupid." -MST3K
Set a standard for libel of it cannot be true under any possible circumstance and that there are no free speech rights. Make the court filing fee of $1,000,000 USD.
Fight Spammers!
There definately needs to be some international agreements working out this sort of thing.
Chris Beckenbach
The above post is wholely created and housed in the United States of America (USA). By exporting the above post outside the borders of the USA the exporter agrees to indemnify and hold harmless the author from any suits arising from act of exporting or the contents of the above post, and further agrees to vigorously defend the author from and assume all liability under all suits of law that arise outside the USA from the act of exporting or the contents of the above post.
I'm serious, reading some of the things that the UN intends to do with the world scare me.
A year ago I thought the UN was a good thing, but it's really starting to push the limits of it's charter. An organization started to defeat Nazism and Japanese Expansionism is starting to become a oppresive system it's self.
I don't want to start a flame war, or US vs. The World, but the UN is getting out of hand.
1. Expansion of the World Court's power.
2. Limiting access to firearms
3. Focusing the Anti-Racism Conference to an Anti-US, Anti-Israel Racism Conference.
4. Refusing to take action in Rwanda, yet "king-making" in Somolia.
Those are my big four right now about the UN.
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.
-Perrin.
Now I want you to go in that bag and find my lightsaber. It's the one that says bad mother-fscker on it.
The suit is against a corporation. Presumably, the corporation does business in Australia; hence, it has assets there, which can be seized to enforce a verdict.
At the moment, corporations are pretty much the only ones at risk, for that very reason. (Although an indvidual may eventually find their possibilities for international travel somewhat limited.) That's the scary part of the Hague treaty. If it's passed, the foreign verdict CAN be enforced in your home country.
The natural recourse is to cease all business in Australia and ignore the law suit. Problem is, as we see with the US attitude with countries like China, profit takes precidence over ethics. It's just profitable to limit your speech in places with Draconian laws.
Burn Hollywood Burn
It seems to me that Justice John Hedigan has just opened a can of worms that even he does not understand. Given that Australians can sue people in the US for defamation now, I guess this would mean that people in the US can sue people in Australia for voilating our 1st amendment rights.
.sig censored by Australian laws.
Last I checked, I am still allowed my opinion here in the US, and if I say that in my opinion John Hedigan is a clueless moron, and he tries to prevent me from expressing my opinion, then he is violating *MY* rights.
It would be a fun thing to be a lawyer and just for kicks, start a class action lawsuit against the Justice and the entire Justice System of Australia for violating our right to free speech. Wouldn't all American residents be qualified to join this lawsuit?
--
This
As a German, I'd like to comment on this. First, I know about the arrest you mentioned, and I think it was wrong. There are laws in Germany that regulate if and when foreign citizens can be arrested in Germany. It is for example possible for you to be arrested in Germany when you've been involved in planning a military attack against Germany, which I think sounds reasonable, as such action threatens Germany's "national security". I suppose the US have similar laws. I don't know if those "foreigner arrest laws" can also be applied to publishers of nazi propaganda. From my reading of the law, it should not be possible, but IANAL.
But either way, there is a difference. Not only is racism definitely worse than calling someone a "devious businessman", most foreign publishers of nazi propanga also specifically leave Germany in order to publish in more free countries. They still publish German texts, and generally target a German audience. They know that if they did publish in Germany, they'd be considered criminals. One might even say that such propaganda threatens the national security of Germany (for example if it encourages terrorist activities against politicians or foreigners living in Germany).
The article discussed in this Australian lawcase, on the other hand, was not targeted specifically to an Australian audience. It was also not published in the US in order to circumvent Australia's laws. And probably the publishers didn't even know it would be a criminal offense to publish the material in Australia. It certainly did in no way threaten Australia's national security.
Don't get me wrong, I do not think the German court's judgement was a wise decision. You should fight fascism, but doing so with methods that aren't democratic is the wrong way. But this Australian judgement, IMHO, takes things a huge step further and is a much greater danger to free publishing on the internet.
Sig (appended to the end of comments I post, 54 chars)
The ability of one nation to impose its laws on non citizens living outside its borders is directly proportional to its ability to project force. In the case of Noriega, it was the United States ability to project our military force to Panama that allowed the forced extradition of Noriega to an American court of law. I am not sure what kind of force the Australian government is prepared to use to impose its laws, but I don't see Aussi commandos raiding the geek compound anytime soon ;-D
I think it's time to make a big push for a new international treaty, akin to a geneva convention
... 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).
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
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.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
This ruling has had a fair bit mainstream press attention, and most of it is well aware of the potential damage the decision could do. Anyway, don't panic quite yet. There's still a way to go before we really have to worry about this piece of judicial stupidity.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
If you are living in another Common law jurisdiction (Canada, UK, etc.) then getting the judgement enforced is possible but not exactly easy. The exception is the US where the courts routinely refuse enforcement of foreign libel judgements, particularly those originating in the UK.
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