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Defamation, Free Speech, Jurisdiction and the Net?
An anonymous reader asks: "I'm writing a legal article on jurisdiction and defamation via the web. There seems to be a trend in various national courts (eg the UK, Australia, Malaysia) to treat the place where a web-page is *read* (ie browsed) as the place of publication of its contents, regardless of where the page or the server serving it are located. This has far-reaching ramifications, as it opens up anyone publishing anything on a web-site (and also Usenet)
in America to the more restrictive domestic laws of other countries -- not just for slander/libel/defamation, but also treason, lese-majestie, hate speech and general censorship laws (think Yahoo and France). Does anyone have personal, practical experience of being threatened by foreign governments or government bodies for material put up on the Net? Or is it just an inevitable consequence, to be overcome by geographical tagging of a browser's location (think icravetv.com) or similar measures?"
"Many people assert that informed Netizens see this as a way of fragmenting the Net, of imposing geographic boundaries and destroying part of the fundamental location-agnostic nature of the web and the Net -- ie, that it's a Bad Thing. Is this really so? Does anyone see this as a good, or at least a neutral, thing?"
So, if I'm in the United States and say CMDRTACO SUCKS, does that mean the government of Taconia will have me arrested for heresy?
Just try to make web sites that please all foriegn governments.
If they can't do anything about broadcast radio propaganda etc, why should they be able to claim jurisdiction over web traffic? The parallels are pretty close.
If I put a BillBoard up on Canadian Soil bashing an American company can they sue me in America , (where as on the web it can be seen from) NO !
Its crap, If I shout slanders from France to Germany say can I be sued in Germany NO,
If I dance Naked in ??? and you can see me from ??? (Alright bad example as you would most certainly be blind at that point) and its legal to dance naked where I am , can I be sued for indecent exposure where you are ?
I tell you this I some worthless Aussie tried to sue me here I go over there and show the boy what "Down Under" really means.........
Sig went tro...aahemmm.....fishing........
If you use the (admittedly stretched) analogy of the internet as a broadcast medium, then you should be able to look at how current laws governing radio and television broadcasts are handled.
What are the laws like covering broadcasts and how are they enforced? With the right medium (satellite, etc.) you should be able to reach many parts of the world where various broadcasts are deemed illegal. For example, pornography and some countries in the Middle East. How are these handled? I would have thought political broadcasts by one country might be deemed illegal in other countries with differing views.
With WIPO and others creating interlocking treaties to enforce "intellectual property rights" across national borders, our own 1st Amendment rights may be increasingly threatened.
Things that we'd regard as valid speech may offend other governments or piss off multinational corporations -- I just hope they won't gain the leverage to suppress them across borders. Certainly in areas connected to copyrighted, trademarked and patented material, the big corporations are trying to gain global power to suppress speech they don't like.
Initiate: *browsing the web* "Wow."
Monk: "Ah, young one, you have made a discovery. From Ah-may-rika."
Initiate: "It's wonderful! But I don't understand."
Monk: "Natalie Portman."
The Zen student was enlightened.
just remember, if someone violates the laws of another country from their country, the offended country must extradite them in order to prosecute. a lot of times there is too much red tape to make this worthwhile. especially for something as trivial as a web page.
I would be more afraid of the opposite, like encryption developers from, say, Norway, Australia, Russia or Finland, being applied doses of whoop-ass called DMCA (or perhaps even the far-reaching 'terrorism' laws mr. Asscrotch created)
Absolutely. If I hear a broadcast from Iran, or any one of the countries that have told the ITF (I think that's the acronym, can't remember right now) that their citizens are not allowed to talk on my ham radio, I'm legally required to not listen to it. I guess I'm supposed to plug my ears, or pull the radio plug out of the wall as soon as I hear a callsign from one of the blacklisted countries. Pretty silly, no?
I see this as a potentially positive development. In my view, it will end up like the patent system (not that I'm making any value judgements about the patent office, don't jump on that). Countries will each balance their individual values against others. Just as IBM and HP have numerous conflicting patents, and as long as they're balanced in their infringements nobody has to sue, different countries will balance their regional restrictions (ie, China will allow political discussions, the US will allow communist or anti-US sentiment) and all that will be cut out is the truly universally damaging content. (Child pornography, primarily).
That's just a hope though, realistically it'll probably just be the US throwing it's weight around trying to impose it's views on the world.
It is highly questionable if it is only a one page site, but if you have it on every page and the other party goes to more than one page, you could argue that they contracted to have it in your chosen jurisdiction.
But even so, if the jurisdiction is improper, you may still have to answer in the improper jurisdiction and file a motion to dismiss there.
Fight Spammers!
this is slightly off-topic (mod away), but i note the assumption that non-US laws are inherently more restrictive than US laws. this is increasingly not the case. note DMCA and USA-Patriot, among others, and recent high-profile cases of foreign nationals being arested in the U.S. for breaking such laws.
mind you, i think your assumption was true a decade ago, and i'd like to see it be true again...
i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
Statement about World Military Terroristic intents
Ever hear of preventitive health care? How about preventitive warfare?
Any foriegn service provider that allows access to american networks should be responsible.
This should read "as it opens up anyone publishing anything on a web-site (and also Usenet) to the more restrictive domestic laws of America". See DMCA for example (USA only).
Sigh. Why do so many Americans just blindly assume everyone else is behind. Yes, there are countries for which this is true. But there are also many for which the reverse is true.
So, to be more specific you could kill the "in America" in the sentence above and would even be more true: Also web pages on other countries could be subjected to more restrictive laws in again other countries.
Right? Yeah, I'll stop nitpicking now.
Home Page
I would think that the foreign policy of the country in which the content creator resides would be the biggest threat to you, rather than the laws of the foreign countries themselves.
If you live in a country where the government is happy to let China stamp on your civil rights the way they deal with student uprisings, then you probably want to stick to making Blogs about high school life, but it's all content relevant.
Look at the Yahoo auctions for Nazi memorabilia for example. The US courts knocked down that French injunction eventually.
Unless you're actually violating federal or state/provincial law in the US or Canada, I'm assuming that you're pretty much safe in publishing whatever you want. But step over that line, and you may find that a foreign dictator has some nice pointy bamboo sticks to insert in places you never considered.
Cheers...
So what will happen? Most likely it will continue as it has for years; corporations and well financed individuals will shop for a juridiction that fits their needs and will prey upon those without similar resources. But more excessive legal claims are obviously impossible; for example, a Chinese government monopistic company claiming that Fortune magazine is slandered them or Iran claiming that FOX must stop broadcasting "impure" TV. However, don't expect the individual website to get such consideration, and don't expect the US not to try to bully it around the other way from time to time...
Sig under construction since 1998.
Let me get this straight. You're writing a legal article. And you're using Slashdot comments as a source? You're also asking anonymously? I've got a personal story you can use as fact: I was held against my will for 17 months in a Chinese forced-labor camp because I created a Jiang Zemin Ate My Balls website in the US and hosted it in the UK and he happened to see it.
Slander, defamation, hate speech, lawsuit threats?
I hear Bernard Shifman might have some knowledge pertaining to this...
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
No. It's not. The simple truth is that if a person in England tries to sue someone in the US of A for slander, (because there the burden of proof is on the defendant) they'd be laughed out of court. people cannot be forced to briung the site offline if they are not in the country that the lawsuit is in, and so the laws are mostly worthless.
I suppose it will take a trial case pursued by the EFF or somebody similar to actually show that the jurisdiction cannot work in this fashion. This will be especially obvious as soon as someone tries to extradite a US citizen to some muslim country where people cannot view "indecently clad" women in pictures, or say things "against Islam." Imagine someone in Afghanistan 6 months ago sueing the Baptist or Catholic or whatever church because their site contained information about Christianity.
I'm a concientious
Because radios are FREE and require no upkeep, electrical power, etc... SUUURRRE...
El Karma: excelente(principalmente la suma de moderación hecha a los comentarios de los usuarios)
I'm writing a legal article on jurisdiction and defamation via the web
Bernie again?????
I'm just being anal here (and I'm bored at work) but I can't be prosecuted in Libya for treasonous comments I make on a web site in the U.S. Treason is an act against an allegiance and that can only be done to my own gov't. As for slander/libel/whatever else? Let 'em come and get me. Who cares if France gets offended by something I say. I'm not in France so I'm not subject to their laws. Only stupid gov'ts will try to enforce such laws and that includes the U.S.
--
http://cheeser.blog-city.com
If I break some Australian law by saying something on my own server, should I really care? Please correct me if I'm wrong, but AFAIK they have no jurisdiction here at all. Their laws don't apply to me in any way, seeing as I've never been there, don't know anyone there, and for all I know the whole continent is make-believe.
"I'll say it again for the logic-impaired." -- Larry Wall.
Check out the following article from the Oregon State bar bulletin. Although it addresses jurisdiction mostly from an intellectual property perspective, many of of the cited cases touch upon the more amorphous concepts involved.
Personal Jurisdiction in the Silicon Forest
In using my website, you agree to be bound by the laws of the United States and that you agree to accept any responsibility for any violations of local laws or treaties that using my website may cause. Further, you agree that you will hold the grantor of this license free from any responsibility should you find the material licensed to you to be libelous or in any other way offensive.
This EULA is not transferable.
Blah, blah, blah....
Oh and by the way, IANAL.
If this were easy, they wouldn't need us to do it!
you are clearly mixing open source with free software :-)
When taken individually, they are very boring. But I am imagining a beowulf cluster of these two unlikely items, together in the same cluster, and it is making me laugh!
Tee Hee!
Imagine it!
I realize this may seem extreme/rude/harsh to some... however, nobody can forecast the laws that another country may decide to introduce. The web is open and free, and to be of any use it must continue to remain so. Like radio or telivision... if you don't like it, change the channel.
Mmmmmmm. Floor pie!
This is like publishing a book in the US, then it gets shipped to Germany. It gets read in Germany, but obviously didn't get published there!
I wonder if this will have a reverse globalisation effect. Where people are afraid to travel not knowing if their actions - legal in their home country, are judged illegal and actionable as soon as they enter any other given country.
... it's not like it hasn't happened already.
Travelling to the UK to see some relatives? Land at Healthrow and expect to get put into jail for some comment in a mailing list posted several years ago?
Nah
Say I were to use it to differentiate prices: people buying books who are coming from one state pay price $X, people coming from another state pay price $Y. Not because of different shipping costs (which may be equal), but because market research has told me that people from state X are willing to pay me more money for the the product.
Or it can be used to block access to material (iCraveTV) - only people from state X are allowed to see this.
Or it can be used in a good way. Think caching servers. If there is a cache server for a major website in every high usage area so that server response times are faster and overall network traffic is lower. However, a lot of sites do this already (fist page: choose your location server).
What is important is that geolocation is used in a good way, improving the lives of citizens, and not restricting what they can and cannot see/hear/know about when that information may be important to them.
So it can behave like many tools. With this hammer, I can build you a house (good) or hit you on the head (bad). With this international treaty, we can (re)build nations in peace, or we can use it to restrict and isolate a nation that does not see things from the true (read: MY) point of view.
So does anyone have any ideas about a good international treaty that can be used to help citizens of all countries? Maybe an extension to the UN Charter of Human Rights.
The significant problems we face cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them. -Einstein
So long as the sentencing against MS anti-trust is the curve we would be being sentenced on,.....
Nothing to be at all concerned about!
NTK summarised it and Cryptome had it here.
where a web-page is *read* (ie browsed) as the place of publication of its contents, regardless of where the page or the server serving it are located.
It seems to me that it is an action carried out by the person doing the surfing. Much like an American going to Canada and trying to come back across with Cuban cigars. Is it the fault of the guy trying to smuggle in the goods, or of the Candadian government for allowing its own citizens and and visitors to buy the cigars?
Not that I favor net censorship. Yes, there is some nasty stuff out there. But you don't have to surf to it. You don't have to expose yourself to it. If you do so and get offended, who's responsiblity is it? Yours. Not the governments, not the person who put up the website. It's not like a billboard, where you will see it if you look in a general direction.
Yes, searches sometimes turn up (possibly) objectionable results, but that just means the searcher needs to learn how to refine searches.
Education, not restrictions.
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
Well, this certainly takes a different spin on things, eh?
;-)
This interpretation of "country of publication" should, then, also effect the copyright laws of printed matter as well. So, I open a book in Singapore and it that makes Singapore the country of publication? I don't think so.
This sounds like any number of "We Own The Net" attitudes spawned by a lack of understanding.
The cure for this is to simply beginning access block for the offending countries. In this case, blocking Australia from wholesale chunks of the net would certainly force a new new view of the situation.
After all, that's what those Allow/Deny's are for, right? If you don't want trouble with neighbor's kids, don't let them in your yard
Now the shoe is on the other foot. cphack, anyone?
archive this manifesto and crap-flood every article with it, everyone should read it, because its true.
As a Brit living in the US who also travels abroad quite offten, I find it hard to understand the reference to other countries more restrictive laws, releative to the US. I'm sure there are some countires (Iraq, Iran, Libya??, although I've never been to any of those) that have more restrictive laws. However it seems to me that corporations funding US politicians are very succesfully restricting all levels of technological freedom.
On the other point of the posting it does seem rediculous that the place where a page is viewed is considered the publication point, as the reader had to request delivery from the server. This is equivalent to buying material legally in one country and smuggling it another country where it is illegal. The person that sold it cannot be held resposible it is the person smuggling it that broke the law.
There are many views on acceptable speech and those are reflected in the laws of individual countries, states, and municipalities. As capatilsm driven globalization merges the various entities into larger more homegenous governments, we will see many of the descrepancies smoothed over between groups that already had views that were pretty close. You can see this trend in lobbying for Universal Copyright Laws.
... If you don't want to end up in a Guyanan court for you website, please try to be active in shaping your government's views early and often.
... I don't have much insight for you short term - except to get a good lawyer if you do cause a rucous.
You will always be able to get in trouble somewhere for something you thought was reasonable at home. Not every governement will adopt the global laws - especialy not at first. But you will see time and again that countries that "never would" eventually do. Information wants to be free, remember? So countries have to adopt laws to tie some information up so they can turn a profit (taxes, fines, wars, etc).
The globalization of capitalism, and the laws that shape capitalism will really accelerate in the next 30 years. As China's middle class grows, as the EU finds its stride as a single republic, and as the countries of North America become more unified; the laws that set standards for what is acceptable speech will become more potent and affect more people.
Sorry for being so terse, but if you read the papers you will pick up the trends I am referring to. You will see it applies to your website regardless of location in the long term.
I'm not a Laywer, so I cannot give any real legal opinions. But it would seem that we are slowly moving to a point where some sort of logical barrier will be created to enforce the geographical barriers that currently exist. Already some countries are trying out what amounts to a national firewall/proxy. Though this poses a lot of freespeech questions(though in some countries this is a non-issue), also it is a logistical nightmare. As for enforcing some sort of location tag on a webpage request this again is a logistical impossibility (imagine joe-end-user trying to set up a disallow list for every country in the world that might not like what he has to say. Also, how the hell would he know about those laws?). I do think that some day the burecrats of the world will finally figure out a way to control internet content access(at least the majority of it), though I dislike the idea as much as the next freespech advocate.
As for any legal/jusidiction issues, I don't think that many of these will be resolved easily. After-all, what country wants to give up its sovreignty over its citizens? I guess we could try and push for a world govenment/standard, but I think that this would just get lots of people killed fighting it.(If slashdot is any indicator Americans, Europeans, and Austrailians will never accept the same set of laws.)
Of course, there are questions that we are having to deal with right now(Think Skylarov, Austrailian Defamation case against US entity). Whether there was a right or a wrong to either issue is irrelevent, what is relevent, is how do we decide if a person can be brought to trial and/or punished?
I can see two ways this could go.
1. You can arrest them if they come to visit. This is what happened to Skylarov, and is roughly the way things seem to go at the moment. But taken to its logical extreme this is a good way to create isolationism. Who would want to travel if they might be arrested and convicted for an action that was legal back home, but is a crime elsewhere?
2. Let it go if it was commited outside your borders. Ok, so as long as I can prove that I wasn't in your country when I broke your encryption and started selling your program to everyone for 5 bucks, its ok. This is a great way to discourage the distribution of software outside its home country, and were back to an isolationist setup.
So what are we left with to do? International laws? Start punishing countries for allowing/disallowing things in thier country? I don't think there is going to be a nice clean answer, and whatever we go with is gonna piss off a lot of people.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
Don't add water, then it can explode!!!
U.S. courts claim jurisdiction over many things that occur outside the states, and many US federal laws cover things that occur outside US boundaries - eg illegal to bribe overseas officials, even if you do it from outside U.S. territory.
Here's something to think about. In many western countries, the age of consent is 16. In the Australian territory of Northern Territory, it is (or was) 12. (!!??!) By US definition, this is child pornography.
Also, remember that under the WIPO treaties, large (and not-so-large) US companies have lots of power over companies in other countries regarding trademarks and copyrights, and I would say that these powers are often abused. Of course, this happens for non-US companies too, it's just that there are so many more large US ones. As patents are covered by these treaties, the US seems to be of the opinion "it is good for the US economy if US companies hold many patents that would otherwise go to non-US companies".
I'm not saying what is right or wrong, and I don't want this post to look anti-US, just add a bit of balance. Eg the N.Z. government, under some pressure from U.S. government, is reviewing it's copyright laws to move them into line regarding copyright of digital materials.
So I guess my point is that U.S. laws are being effected in other countries as well. I don't think U.S. yahoo should be subject to French laws, but if they had a French office then a French magistrate could argue that they were operating in France. U.S. judges do this stuff too.
--
look at rotten.com which was banned in germany - but they have no way of actually implementing that. also germany has tried to make cerfues (selected times where it can be viewed) on internet porn sites - which is also un-implementable. unless your operating in the country and they have a physical means of stopping you - your free.
Ave Molech Setting
Or worse yet people can be in violation of the DMCA . in other nations.
I think that two things need to happen over the reasonably near future, if the Internet is to avoid falling into disrespect and neglect.
Firstly, there needs to be some sort of mechanism for content to be tailored to particular audiences in different regions. This might be enforced by forming barriers between different telecoms networks, but it would probably make more sense for it to be a guideline. If you choose to download something in a region that isn't indicated, you are now responsible for the content; you were given fair warning. This seems a reasonable compromise on the issue of what is politically acceptable in different regions.
Secondly, the Internet needs proper tracability. As I've said here before, with freedom comes responsibility. If you want to keep your rights to free speech, you're going to have to accept that you can't do it truly anonymously. Otherwise, spamming will be the least of your problems; undefended defamation, damaging legal, financial or medical advice, free information on how to make bombs, etc. could become the norm. At that point, the Internet loses all credibility as a serious medium. The big names go away, it falls into disuse, and it dies.
On the other hand, one of the great advantages to the Internet is the fact that you can, currently, say things anonymously. In cases where what you say is true, but would get you in trouble if you were identified, this is useful; it's only a problem when it's abused (and as we all know, it is regularly abused). So, in the same way as the world has worked for years outside of the Internet, we need a system where you can opt not to give your name initially, but where suitable authorities (e.g., the police acting on a court order in many western countries) can identify you if you are found to have done something wrong, so you are still accountable.
This allows for an investigation to be carried out into whether or not something that's been said is against the rules, and only when it's been found to be wrong do the authorities identify the poster and take action against them. Sure, it's not perfect, but at least now it's the same as the rest of the world, and guys can't go around claiming to be doctors and getting people killed or slagging me off behind my back. And hey, you get to annihilate most of the world's spammers in the process. Now you can have the free speech you value so highly, but you can still get screwed if you abuse the privilege. That sounds like a pretty fair compromise to me.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
The broadcasts persisted, and some might say that they had an important role in the fall of communism.
We must ensure that we do not build up walls of our own that blind us from what is going on outside.
But don't take my word for it. Read up on this topic and figure it out for yourself.
The significant problems we face cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them. -Einstein
If you think those in power are going to cater to your desires without force or bribery, you are sorely mistaken.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
I'm from Argentina: Tango, Asado, Mate, Gaucho, Maradona, YPF
There's no way a foreign government will be able to impose its laws and succeed in prosecuting citizens of a separate sovereign nation under them. A foreign government that wants to pursue such an approach ought to start by suing the people who operate the network infrastructure at the first point of contact into their jurisdiction.
D
But, under civil law one may contract away rights available to them. One can waive rights to make a claim, which is standard on most settlement agreements. One may waive the right to file suit, which is common to many arbitration agreements.
Fight Spammers!
This article wouldn't have been sent in by Bernard Shifman about this website, would it?
My experience, as a non-US ISP, is that all legal
:)
:)
letters claim everything under the sun that is
applicable to the US legal system. Even if it
doesn't apply at all, such as DMCA threats,
federal trademarks, or the amount in which one
can use material under fair use conditions.
The most ridicilous ofcourse, I encountered while
defending clients with Scientology criticism
L.A.
http://www.soci.niu.edu/~cudigest/aabbs/aabbs.html
Twoflower
--
Twoflower
What happens in the event that a page is opened in a restricted area? Can you be sued for tresspassing?
It's a bit of a paradox, discussing whether or not the country of viewing binds the restrictions on a published page. Each country will decide for themselves whether or not to censor/restrict any web page, even if the country of origin is different. So, discussing the problem is nice, but it has to be done for every single country.
IMHO any country that controls its populace through ignorance, either as fanatical as the taliban's ban on educating women, or Australia's ludicrous internet laws, sees the Internet as an enemy. Only a powerful movement of the populace will change that.
Moderation: Put your hand inside the puppet head!
This is not the first post so you may continue your
reading of this article.
What with Zen coming from there and all...
Jurisdiction is the power of a court to enforce its decision over the defendant. There has to be a rationale basis for a court to do that. What a lot of people don't understand is that not only does the U.S. have federal law, each state has its own laws, and there exists a question of whether a person from California can be hauled into a court in Maryland to answer for their actions. I know, it seems silly, but that's the way it is. It's similar when you are dealing internationally. There are usually two key issues in most courts: 1) whether the defendant caused an actual injury in the forum state/country, and 2) whether that harm was reasonably foreseeable?. If both of these are present, then the court will likely find jurisdiction. If the first is present, but not the second, it's a toss-up, but don't be surprised if the court finds jurisdiction. That is probably (note: PROBABLY) the standard a court will use with websites. In fact, if I remember correctly, that was the standard the French court used in the Yahoo nazi case. There have been a lot of comments about how the laws of a foreign country don't apply to nonresident noncitizens. That's not entirely true, though. Many nations have treaties with other nations that say they will enforce the judgments of each other's courts. In the U.S., we have the Full Faith and Credit clause of the Constitution that says judgments from the courts of a different state will be enforced. Many treaties have a similar clause. For an example of what this means, let's look at the Yahoo case. Several groups in France sued Yahoo for violating French laws pertaining to the sale of hate parephenalia (auctions of nazi stuff) to French citizens. If Yahoo had simply told the French court to go to hell and not showed up, and there existed a treaty between the U.S. and France recognizing each other's judgments (I think there is, but I'm not sure), the French court could issue a judgment, and then the plaintiff's could bring that judgment to a U.S. court to enforce. Bottom line: Don't be so sure you're out of reach until you do your research! My final point: most of the discussion here seems to focus on criminal law, but there are a lot of civil claims that could arise from the operation of a website, not the least of which are libel and intellectual property claims, as well as violations of some nations limits on publication of certain types of content.
You said all these things and, yet, you proved
;-)
by your writing that you know a lot about slashdot... you seem to be a regular reader.
So, what is this post all about? I believe it
is very likely that you are just begging
for some attention... am I right? You are
one of these folks that want to impress everyone
by your wonderful capacity to spell.
Congratulations, pal. Keep up the good work
I hope they recognize the location of the server as the place of publication.... Locate your server in a public restroom where there's lots of graffiti. Then use a "community standards" argument to defend your content.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
One of the noblest moments in human history was when settlers in the new America rose up to assert and defend their independence from the religious oppression that was endemic throughout Europe.
We now face a similar threat to freedom, with governments around the world asserting power to stifle free speech originating from other countries.
However, this time, guns simply won't work.
The call to arms that I espouse is for all internet users to adopt the weapons of anonymity and encryption.
For the sake of basic online human rights, I call on all netizens to familiarise themselves with all anonymising technologies, and for all people with development skills to create and improve such technologies.
One basic weapon is the anonymising proxy server. This allows people to use the web to publish opinions that cannot be traced to them personally (assuming of course the operator of the proxy server don't keep logs and make them available to various authorities worldwide).
But an even more potent weapon is the Free Network project at www.freenetproject.org. Freenet provides technology that allows freesites (similar to websites) to be published. The advantage of freesites is that they can't be traced to their author, since they are distributed at several points around the network. In fact, any attempt to locate the source of the information, or delete it, results in such information proliferating further around the net.
However, Freenet is just a taste of things to come. There's a whole new generation of stealth technologies emerging which will wrest the power of the internet out of the hands of governments and restore it to the common citizen. One such technology is the Invisible Internet Project (formerly called Invisible IRC Proxy), which will provide secure IP-level tunnelling, anonymising and encryption features.
People, please don't take these threats to your freedom lying down. If enough of us start using these new liberating technologies, we'll be too large a market for ISPs and governments to block us.
-- In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was UNSIGNED, and the main(){} was without form and void...
My complaint about John Ashcroft
May I be cynical for a bit? I hope you don't mind,
but with Ashcroft's latest barrage of
malodorous notions, I can't resist the urge to make a
few cynical comments. To get right
down to it, some of the facts I'm about
to present may seem shocking. This
they certainly are. However, it's time that a few
facts had a chance to slip through the fusillade of hype.
What's my problem, then? Allow me to present it
in the form of a question: Where are the people
who are willing to stand up and acknowledge
that Ashcroft, in his infinite wisdom, has decided
to destroy the natural beauty of our parks and forests?
On the surface, it would seem to have something to do
with the way that his whole approach is repugnant.
But upon further investigation, one will find that
by allowing Ashcroft to put mephitic thoughts in our
children's minds, we are allowing him to play puppet master.
As for the lies and exaggerations, Ashcroft's
epigrams are rife with contradictions
and difficulties; they're entirely maladroit,
meet no objective criteria, and are unsuited
for a supposedly educated population.
And as if that weren't enough, if Ashcroft is going to
obstruct important things, then he should at least have
the self-respect to remind himself of a few things: First, a
true enemy is better than a false friend. And
second, many people respond to his debauched vituperations
in much the same way that they respond to television
dramas. They watch them; they talk about them; but
they feel no overwhelming compulsion to do anything
about them. That's why I insist we pronounce the truth
and renounce the lies.
Even people who consider themselves scornful
foolhardy-types generally agree that Ashcroft's slurs
symbolize lawlessness, violence, and misguided rebellion
-- extreme liberty for a few, even if the rest of us
lose more than a little freedom. One might conclude
that Ashcroft is incapable of writing a letter without using
such phrases as "crapulous pop psychologists", "loquacious
exhibitionists", "oppressive personae non gratae", or
some combination thereof. Alternatively, one might conclude
that Ashcroft has a different view of reality from the rest of us.
In either case, if you're not part of the solution,
then you're part of the problem. His historical record of
fickle pleas is clearer than the muddled pronouncements
of his apple-polishers for a variety of reasons. For
instance, the worst sorts of inconsiderate Neanderthals there
are must be treated with political justice, not with
civil justice, as they are sincerely not real citizens. Let me
rephrase that: I wonder if he really believes the
things he says. He knows they're not true, doesn't he?
A complete answer to that question would
take more space than I can afford, so I'll have to give
you a simplified answer. For starters, if
we let him cause riots in the streets, then greed,
corruption, and tribalism will characterize the government.
Oppressive measures will be directed against citizens.
And lies and deceit will be the stock and trade of the
media and educational institutions.
Even Ashcroft's bedfellows couldn't deal with the full impact of
Ashcroft's refrains. That's why they created "Ashcroft-ism," which is
just a garrulous excuse to force square
pegs into round holes. He plans to drag everything
that is truly great into the gutter. He has instructed
his votaries not to discuss this or even admit to his
plan's existence. Obviously, Ashcroft knows he has
something to hide. Most of you reading this letter
have your hearts in the right place. Now
follow your hearts with actions. I have traveled the length and
breadth of this country and talked with the best people. I can
therefore assure you that Ashcroft's artifices cannot stand on
their own merit. That's why they're dependent on elaborate
artifices and explanatory stories to convince us that Ashcroft's
warnings can give us deeper insights into the nature of
reality. We can and we must protect ourselves by any means
necessary against the unrestrained bestiality
of stupid, quasi-macabre paper-pushers. And that's the honest truth.
[idea] Include meta-data with every opinion you write. [/idea]
/stupid-idea]
[offensive] Some people are overly sensitive and can't stand the idea of people having differing opinions. [/offensive]
[suggestive] This sucks. [/suggestive]
[x-rated] This really sucks donkey balls. [/x-rated]
[over-simplified, stupid-idea] So my thinking was that everybody could use XML to solve this problem! If they nest all of their opinions with descriptions like I'm showing here in psuedo form. [/over-simplified,
[flawed] Then everybody can set their browsers to filter anything they don't want to hear![/flawed]
[ignorant] This solution solves everybody's problem, and everybody will be happy! And, it'll be very easy to implement! [/ignorant]
"Derp de derp."
Suppose a kid, let's call him Jon, is sitting in a country, let's say Norway, and writes software that does something that pisses off somebody else, let's say the Motion Picture Association of America, because it does something like, oh, decrypts the content scrambling system on DVDs.
Now let's say this is perfectly legal in Norway but not in the MPAA's country, let's call it America.
Does this enable the MPAA to sue poor Jon for breaking a law that does not apply where he lives?
Of course, maybe this has no point because of course it is purely hypothetical, as I said...
Anyone who solicits advice on legal issues from slashdot is a fool. Do your own research, you'll get better results too.
In effect, your PC acts as a telescope to "see" a website anywhere in the world. So, assuming the subject matter is legal in their locale, is the person to hold accountable the website author, or the viewer who sought out that site? Happenstance discoveries of goatse.cx & Co are another issue -- be careful where you look! This also makes spammers pointing to illegal-in-your-viewing-area sites into accessories to an improper act.
In short, is the nudist on the legal nude beach in the wrong, or the complainer who used binoculars to view the nudist from afar?
I do acknowledge that multi-national corporations have other additional problems, especially if they have offices/assets in those contries whose laws prohibit the content posted, but some protection is better than none. I predict that US courts will continue to follow the precedent set by the Yahoo! case.
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
The burden is on the business (or server) to obey the laws of the land where they operate. Hosting a web site should not exclude a person or company from liability. If I print a newsletter in the US and then drop it by plane in France, I should adhere to French law. If I host a web site that French citizens have access to, likewise.
Also, ignorance is no excuse. Should I happen to travel to another country, the burden is on me to learn the traffic laws before I rent a car and drive around.
Can I bum a sig?
Yes, this seems to be a big problem which is currently underestimated.
The international criminal law of most countries tends to be mostly concerned about how to catch "criminals" that act from abroad. So usually every offense that has the slightest relation to a country can be brought in action at courts of this country. The same problem exists with international private law: In the case of torts or IP infringment one can go to the courts of the own country and the applicable law is the law of that country.
This of course is very unfortunate: If you want to publish something on the WWW, Usenet, etc. you would have to check the laws of every country you plan to visit (or have extradition or long-arm treaties with such countries). In my opinion, we need international treaty that establish a principle of country of origin for all material posted on international networks (even personal email). So one would only have to check the laws of the country one is in, maybe the country of the ISP/webspace provider/... (if different).
Claus
IMHO -- this web page is stored on my server, in my country, with my laws. If you don't want to see it, or if you don't want access to it, then don't request that page. The internet is not a "push" medium. You are perfectly welcome to not request my web pages, or deny all packets from my server.
Conversely, this would be a rare bit of irony, if it does apply to the country that ordered Norwegian hacker Johanssen brought overseas for trial at the behest of their recording industry and mediacorps.
"First you gotta do the truffle shuffle."
ever since 9/11 noone dares speak out. before /. was a damn ggod Dubya bashing site and now everyone seems to have gotten "with the programe"... SISSIES!!
You should check with Keith Henson. His run ins while protesting the civil rights abuses of the C.o. $cientology have shown that it doesn't matter where you live, you can be sued in California.
Actually, there are published books citing slashdot as the best thing since sliced bread. The reason is simple: slashdot contains an active feedback mechanism in the form of the ratings given to each article. This enables filtering of content to find the least pathetic articles and acts as to refine the content of the site. As a result, articles which are out-of-context, "flamebait" or just plain cranky are effectively bypassed. The system is programmed to be self-regulating and is, I feel, quite a clever idea. Independent confirmation for this is provided by the large number of people who use the system. The system works. It ignores spam. It ignores irrational blabberers. It can also ignore worthwhile work but hey, no-one's perfect.
As someone taking an A/S in the argument analysis subject Critical Thinking, I suggest you produce a more logical series of conclusions and reasons, with assumptions clearly indicated. And, if you really hate the system so much:
a) why on earth are you using it
b) why not try designing a better one. By 'better' I mean more commercially successful. Then you too can be a millionaire!
By the way, not everyone who posts has bad English. Of the remainder, most couldn't care less.
not skYLarov
I put up some controversial material and I soon got a message stating that my website was a little to similar to another (that I had never been to). Someone threatened to file suit and such, but I am fairly sure (almost positive) it was because they disapproved of the content (as I would if I saw it now) rather than because of any website similarities. I wouldn't be surprised if their website was not made to look like mine (they were just a little too similar).
All the more reason for one global government(*note* I am very against one global government... but they aren't).
When you receive an unsolicited call you can set the standard for decency and if they didn't like that standard, they either shouldn't have called or they should have hung up as soon as they got from where you were coming.
Likewise there is a big difference between emailing someone an unsolicited message and someone hitting your website. If you send someone an unsolicited email and it arrives in a foreign country, you have committed an act in that foreign country. However, if your website receives a request for information from a foreign country and you respond -- its a different story: The foreign national committed the act of sending a request for information outside his country and you responded, outside his country, to that act (which he committed both inside and outside his country). Subscribing to a mailing list is a solicitation for email so you can't claim that email received from such an email list to which you have subscribed is "unsolicited". This stuff isn't really controversial except to the brain-dead and/or brain-washed -- it is simply the rational approach to these trans-national communications technologies.
Countries that allow their nationals to be arrested by foreign countries for acts committed outside those foreign countries are not true "countries" in the sense of sovereign states and their passports should not be relied upon.
Since very few countries are willing to act appropriately in most of these situations, their passports are not, for those purposes, truly those of sovereign states.
The response to this situation by the de facto sovereign individual is to limit travel:
Countries that arrest foreign tourists for acts committed outside their countries should be avoided by all tourists.
Seastead this.
hmmm, enough speculation, let's do some real-world tests...
King Fahad bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud is a stinky fat old man who likes to molest little boys.
George W. Bush is a homosexual rapist who wears women's underwear. (I say homosexual because I figure GW is probably a homophobe, not 'cause I consider it an insult generally)
President Chirac is a murderer! he killed my entire family!
ok, I'm gonna go hide for awhile now while we wait to see the results...
The area of internet jurisdiction is very complex and often confused. When it comes to defamation, look at a case called Calder v. Jones, 465 US 783. Basically, the court found that California had the jurisdiction to hale Floridians into Cal because their defamation against Shirley Jones was an intentional act, that was aimed at California and they knew their comments were likely to cause harm in California. Several courts have applied Calder to the Internet, where the "effects" of the defamation is where the jurisdiction can also be found.
America may well have the DMCA and the USA-Patriot Act, but it also has the ACLU, Alan Dershowitz, Johnny Cochrane, etc., etc.
In other words, we may have restrictive laws, but we also have a bunch of chiselers out to finess them.
Contract this with countries that
- like the former USSR, have great Constitutions in the abstract, and secret police to liquidate you if you attempt to exercise any "right" you may have.
- don't have Constitutions at all, just the will of the assorted ruling gerontocracies.
- have Constitutions, and strict laws derived therefrom, but with noting like the counter-balancing provided by, say, the ACLU
Things are strange right now in the U.S. There's change happening based on technology and terrorism and at such times over-reactions will occur. I have no doubt that things will free up in the next decade.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
Canada does suck. They're a bunch of socialist punks. They need the government to be their mommy and daddy throughout their lives. I bet some bureacrat comes over to Canadian houses to wipe people's asses, because they think it can't be done without help from the government.
The Hauge Convention is not the WIPO Copyright Treaty.
The WIPO Copyright Treaty is the next step in a series of international IP treatys, besides a lot of sane stuff it also includes the no circumvention devices clause. I'm not sure whether the DMCA implements the WIPO CT in the US or the WIPO CT was influenced by the DMCA (or drafts thereof).
The Hague Conventions makes cross-border litigation easier. That is, for example, if someone sends you a mail bomb from abroad, you can sue him in your country, which is actually a good idea. The only problem is with broadcast mediums such as Internet: Here it means that you can be sued everywhere where your posted stuff can be received. (Please note that many countries already have bilateral treaties like the HC, including the US and most of Europe. It's only that the majority people don't make use of it even if it was possible.)
Claus
If the copy of the NYTimes that you would buy in London has been edited to the laws of England?
I'm not talking about the European version, but one which has been imported.
If you can get the American version of the NYTimes in England, I'd say that the laws are highly questionable with regard to web browsers, and I would clearly make that point.
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
Does anyone have personal, practical experience of being threatened by foreign governments or government bodies for material put up on the Net?
"Hey Mom, just so you don't hear any wild rumours, I'm being indicted for fraud in Australia." - Bart Simpson. Notice he didn't have to go to Australia, they can't force him to, only his own government can. While I might be worried about breaking those laws if you regularly go to the country in question, there's no reason for most of us to worry about restrictions in China or the Middle East.
Maybe something that could protect legally, as well as help jerk people into realizing the state of affairs would be to create a project that:
(a) Makes a list of countries with free enough laws for various purposes of web sites
(b) Create click throughs similar to Adult sites where people click to verify that they are over 21, except the click through would be to verify that people live in one of the listed countries.
For example, if the USA, Hungary, and Japan have acceptable libel laws, then discussion sites would verify that users come from one of those.
Or auction sites, could verify that someone is not in Germany or France, etc.
Perhaps sites with certain types of media could confirm that viewers are not coming from UCITA-like countries such as the USA.
The idea is not to keep people from those countries out, but to help them realize that they are going to have to be democratically active to fix their countries idiot laws. Plus it might protect the sites from the legal problems mentioned.
In the Yahoo vs. France case, US courts have held that france has no jurisdiction to censor US run sites.
So, if the governments of the world want to censor the contents of the web, then...
1) they can prevent servers from their country from posting those material, and
2) they can take the time and money to filter materials that they deem inapproprate.
I certainly am not gonna give 2 shits about what France, Iraq or anyother country says I can put up. I barely care what US tells me I can put up...
My experience is that we tend to have more problems with either over zealous moderators (Slashdot? NO NEVER! Well, on occaision), like recent incidents at DSLR and AnandTech, which have resulted in a few friends getting together an unmodded place at CosmicShell.
It's been working out quite nicely. We've had no real problems, though, activity has gone down with our favourite coder doing extra-solar planet observations for the next week.
"Yeah...it was the numbers that were irrational, not the murderous cult of vegetarians...." -- Hippasus of Metapontum
It's worth thinking about the other side though. A country that did not share America's copyright protections, might make tons of intellectual property available. Whose responsibility is it then to stop me, Mr. American, from downloading this content? Cause it is surely illegal for me to do so.
My opinion of course is that the point of crime is when I as the consumer "bring" the ofensive data into my country and thus break my laws. It's the only way that makes sense.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
Consider that many countries do not allow their non-official religion to have an outlet. So you work at an ISP that hosts a christian webpage.. you go on vacation and end up in jail?
My personal view is that there should be nothing Censored on the Internet, however this is impractical and rather anarchistic of me :)
:) And a true pipe dream in reality.
My coworker and I had an extended discussion about this.
His belief is that as long as the content on the server is not illegal in the location that the server is housed in then the content is legal to post.
I prefer to think of the Internet as a Space unto itself, and while having ties to the physical world and the cultures contained therein, I feel that it would be best to leave the Internet unregulated. I realize that there is a Pandora's Box that is opened by saying this, but that is my Utopian way of thinking
Quite simply if the server and the user reside in a place where the content is legal, that person has no responsibility to make sure that a person in another jurisdiction where it is illegal cannot/does not view it.
So, to who does the responsibility fall to make sure that this content is not viewed? I believe that depends on the culture and the government of each jurisdiction. Saudi Arabia/other Muslim Nations have made it the governments' responsibility to keep their population from viewing materials that it/their religion/culture deems appropriate.
So, let each country/culture deem whether they want government owned filters, private blocking by the Service Providers, or good old fashioned User Discretion (!).
What would I like to see?
I would like to see, at least in America (we can't speak for other countries it is up to them to decide) personal responsibility. If you don't like the content, don't go there.
"What about the children?", you say.
Quite simply, you don't let your children go running all over the world without supervision. Would you let your child walk from New York to San Jose ? Hell no!
The same principal applies to the Internet, it is a world, there is a reason that it is called Cyberspace. You don't let your children load pages that contain content that you don't think they should be exposed to, just like you don't let your children go to strip clubs. Children should not be on the Internet unsupervised, parents have a responsibility to raise their children, not the government.
The Internet is just like the real world, it should not be dumbed down and censored until it is as inane as American television. It should be a place of independent thought, and ideas.
kisanth@exario.net
I am not American, therefore I have different worries: "foreign" laws do not harrass me, but nowadays I never know when or if Americans, like Gestapo in the olden days, fetch me to a court that is not responsive or responsible to anyone, leaving my loved ones wondering where I am. Mind you, I'm not a terrorist, but if an American somehow gets the idea, there is no way I'll be saved from this lawless court. Perhaps I'm doomed after this post? This man can't be anything but a terrorist? What is he hiding? Let's take him in for torture for a couple of months and see what he's been up to!
The whole purpose of a sovereign government is to protect its citizens from outside force. In the US constitution it lists "provide for the common defense" as a basic part of government. Laws are an extension of force. My ancestors came to the US from France in the 1790s, but I don't have to pay French taxes. Instead I pay US taxes for the purpose of making sure (by force) that I will never have to pay French taxes or be subject to the laws of France or any other foreign country while I'm living in the US.
If this would stand, then the Taliban or some other repressive Islamic country (Iraq or Syria for example) could extradite you and charge you with crimes of posting pictures of people or animals (and I don't mean porn pictures) to your website since it is illegal under Islamic law to have pictures of any animal or human life form.
This would cause the whole notion of what a nation means to fall apart.
a. the Yahoo! case only came out the way it did because Yahoo! is incorporated in France. Otherwise there is no jurisdiction.
b. Zippo v. Zippo.com governs jurisdiction in the U.S. The gist is that simple delivery of web pages (browsing) does not get one jurisdiction but active content does.
c. See Prof. Jack Goldsmith at U of Chicago Law School for lots on this.
A MiniHowTo on Pleasing Malaysia Court -
1. Get A Lot Of Money.
2. Donate The Money To The Prime Minister Of Malaysia, or, Give A Sizeable Chunk Of Your Company (in terms of shares / ownership) to One Or More Sons Of The Prime Minister. In Other Words, Bribe The Guy, Or Bribe His Family.
3. Get To Know The Judges - who are appointed by the Prime Minister - through the Prime Minister himeself.
4. Before You File A Defamation Suit, Tell The Prime Minister About It. Make Sure That The Judges *Are* Informed Of Your Up And Coming Suit.
5. From Then Onwards, Everything Is Arranged For You. You Can Ask For Whatever Amount. You Victory Is Guaranteed Even If YOur Evidence Is Extra-Ordinarily Flimsy.
6. If You Can't Collect The Judgement - If The Losing Side Don't Have The Money - You Can Sue Again, And Make Those Bastards Pay For "Defaming You". The Court System Of Malaysia Will Throw Your Enemies Into Jail, Because No Justice In Malaysia Will Dare To Make The "Friends Of Prime Minister" Look Bad.
End Of MiniHowTo
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
You must not have recognized it, but this is basically the Libertarian political philosophy. You'd best think about what you're saying before you go criticising the most principled, consistent, and well-respected political philosophy in the world.
Some pervert persuades your 9 year old daughter into having sex with him.
Children are not adults, and can't make most decisions for themselves. It is the job of parents to be responsible for their children until they're of an appropriate age to arbitrate their own lives. Until your daughter is an adult, she's effectively your property, within certain limits (maybe a fourth article should be added, like the one the Libertarian platform has, to address which rights over the children are given to the parents and which are reserved for the children themselves; for example, parents should be able to restrict the child's right to have sex, but the child should retain control of her right to use the restroom when she wishes), and thus if someone has sex with her without your consent, that's force against your property, and you're justified to retaliate.
The wierdo with the apartment directly beneath you likes to brew his own personal batches of nitro glycerine. Understandably, you're nervous.
Complain to the owner of the apartment, who has no obligation to rent the apartment to that person. Given the choice between losing you as a renter and losing the crazy guy with the bomb fetish, I'd say the situation will probably be dealt with to your satisfaction.
If the landlord creates a rule against having explosives on the property, and that person violates the rule by having explosives on the property, then that person has initiated force against the landlord and the landlord is free to retaliate.
If not, it's not your property, so leave.
An unscrupulous business person changes his mind and backs out of a contract.
That's fraud, which is a form of force. If someone says to you, "I will give you $500 in exchange for oral sex," and you provide the oral sex, and he doesn't provide the $500, he's initiated force against you and you're free to defend yourself.
A 17 year old teenager with a Trans Am drives through your residential neighborhood at over 100 miles an hour.
If the teenager incurs any damage to you or anyone else, he/she will be responsible for the damage. Beyond that, complain to the owner of the street, and convince the owner of the street to enforce a speed limit. You're only free to do what you want on your OWN property, on someone else's property, you have to follow their rules, otherwise you're using force against their property and they're free to defend themselves.
A slovenly neighbor leaves all manner of junk in his yard, bringing down local property values.
Convince everyone whose property borders on this man's property to build a wall on their property that obstructs view of his property. Or ask him nicely to remove his junk, or volunteer to remove it for him.
No, this doesn't work. Good idea, but it's not quite right.
Yes, it does work. Good idea, and it is quite right.
It just takes a little bit of common sense.
Let's all flame about how much we all hate da gummermint.
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
I masterbate wif a sliderule, I hear banjo music!
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
Duhhh, dot you belong to de anti-defecation league?
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
- How do you define 'force'? Supposing a lot of people verbally assault a person? Supposing a lot of people ignore a person all the time? (I'll be nice and assume that 'force' means physical force, verbal assualt, imprisonment, slander, et al.)
- How much force can be used before it ceases to be moral and legal?
- Is force allowed to be used in cases where people must be held during legal proceedings, but it is unclear whether any person involved has actually used or threatened force?
- Is using force against those who do not abide by this Constitution a valid exception?
SorrySecurity through promiscuity is no better than security through obscurity.
right or wrong, it points to a flaw in the regulation of content on the net. It's OK to argue that there should be free speech, but I also want the right to privacy, as in, no SPAM! I 'pay' for the quantity of data coming into my computer, spam is theft of my money, but laws in the US, which is where most spam originates, don't cover the offshore servers than actually send out this crap for people in the US. (yes, Australian law makers have no concept of the 'net)
BZZT! Wrong.
You are required not to TALK to that station. You can listen all you want.
So, if you hear
CQ CQ CQ de EPA0X3
You can listen to your heart's content without it ITU (International Telecommunication Union) having a problem with it (now, your local government may, but that's a different story).
However, if you reply, then you are in trouble.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Se dice "el primer mensaje". Paleto.
Can anyone explain to me how viewing a web page is different than getting someone to fax you the information? Surely there aren't similar laws against The New York Times faxing you (and anyone else who wants it) their paper as there are on putting it on their web page?
i'm an australian living in australia. yet my web server is located in the US. i don't want to be subject to US law. why should i be?
there needs to be a way to identify location of the author when a web page is posted. RDF, and other metadata standards need to be enforced on all website authors so that we get useful, meaningful information about sites so that jurisdiction can be clearly established.
the internet is now completely unworkable, every government is involved and every government doesn't understand the technology.
if commerical interests were not involved, all this would be easier IMHO. if the internet remained as an academic communication tool, we wouldn't have all this DMCA, CIPA, RIAA madness.
as for libel and defamation? there's a much easier solution. write to the owner of the server and get the material you dislike taken off. far easier and cheaper than court.
Dear Mr. Hitler:
The dry-cleaners called. Your white sheet isn't going to be ready in time for the cross-burning tonight.
What you spout is the same neo-facist, state-ist nonsense that every despot has spouted, from Ghengis Khan to Stalin to Hitler to Castro to Clinton. "Give up your freedom, and trust in society to take care of you! Society is your friend! Government can cure all your ills! The welfare of society outweighs your rights! The government knows what's best for you! People don't matter, society does!" Those are the fundamental ideas behind Socialism, Communism, Fascism, Nazi-ism, Liberalism, Socialism, Leftism, Rightism, Reactionaryism, Progressivism, and every other destructive political philosophy that's every plauged human existence.
Actually, I did recognize it, as well as your tendency to be patronizing, which is probably related to your tendency to engage in absolutes.
Absolutes can be a very good thing. If you believe "everything is relative," then it's easy to go from "it's wrong to torture and murder children" to "I believe it's wrong to torture and murder children" to "it's mostly wrong to torture and murder children" to "torturing and murdering children is a neutral act" to "it's perfectly acceptable to torture and murder children" to "all children must be raped, tortured, and murdered for the good of society." That's where relativism leads you. Don't you think that Absolutes might not be so bad by comparison?
But not soon enough. Nitrocglycerine is volatile! Someone's mixing volatile explosives 8' under your ass, and your answer is "wait for the landlord to intervene"? Surely thou jesteth!
First of all, how are the private activities of your neighbor any business of yours? How do you know what he's doing down there?
Second, if it explodes, I fully support holding the guy responsible for the damage he does.
Third, what's wrong with "wait for the landlord to intervene"? Under your state-ist system, your solution would be "wait for the police to intervene" -- what makes you think that the police will act more expediently than the landlord will? The landlord's property is at stake, whereas the police are off arresting and murdering people for such "society-destroying" crimes like anal sex or consuming certain chemicals in the privacy of their homes.
Oh, Enlightened One, how would we survive without you and the morality police shooting homosexuals, pot-smokers, and other "criminals." We owe you a great debt.
Good that you should bring this up! In fact, the "Landlord", at our collective request, has indeed made such a rule in virtually every city around.
Oh, great. I expected this. The "government is just a regular guy like you and me" nonsense. The government is allowed to steal money from people and shoot them if they refuse to go along with the theft. The government is free to shoot people who consume certain chemicals and refuse to go to jail for it. The government is free to make arbitrary rules that the vast majority of the population is opposed to, and then shoot people for violating them. And if people don't like it, there's no recourse -- they could leave the country, but the governments control EVERY country.
It's an issue of CHOICE, and you hate CHOICE. What if I WANT to live in a building where I'm allowed to mix Nitro, along with other people who either mix Nitro themselves, or who don't mix Nitro personally but understand and agree to the risks? In a society where the government sets the rules, there's no choice -- every place has the same rules. In a society where every person makes the rules for his own property, you can live in an environment where the rules are custom-tailored to YOUR style of living, with other like-minded people.
That's choice, that's freedom, and that's what you want to destroy.
I didn't say that he deliberately deceived you, I said that he backed out. Changed his mind.
It doesn't matter if he originally planned to honor his promise or not. It you say you're going to do something in exchange for something else, and you get the something else, but you don't do the something, you're guilty of fraud -- plain and simple. You're ignorant.
Ahem. The front of the property.
I don't understand what point you're trying to make. If the man is putting junk on somebody ELSE's property, then that's the use of force. If he's keeping junk on his OWN property, then all the surrounding people have to do is build walls on THEIR property to block the line of site to HIS property, so that they can't see the junk. Or they could just move. If odor is traveling from the junk onto other people's property, that's force, and the people whose property the odor is drifting onto can defend themselves.
He says "no," and tells you to fuck off.
Then either fucking deal with it, or leave to live among more like-minded people.
State-ism is based on the concept that everybody should be the same, have the same values, the same ideals, and believe the same thing.
Libertarianism is based on the concept that it's okay to have different ideals and values than other people -- for highest quality of life you'll want to live among like-minded people similar to yourself, but you don't force non-like-minded people to conform to your ideals.
That's what state-ism is all about: forcing other people to conform to your view of reality.
Well, to hell with your view of reality. You have your view of reality, and I have mine. Under a state-ist system, the people with minority views of reality have to live in servitude to the majority. In a Libertarian society, the people with one view of reality can live their own way with like-minded people, and people with another view of reality can live somewhere else among people similar to themselves, and some people can live all alone and answer to nobody but themselves.
It's wrong for the majority to force its ideals, morality, and worldview on the minority. That's fascism, and that's what every fascist from Ghengis Khan to Stalin to Hitler to Castro to Clinton have had in common, and that's what YOU have in common with them.
No. It's been tested and failed.
No, Libertarianism has never been implemented on a nation-sized scale in the real world. The Internet, however, is an example of a Libertarian government: everyone can do whatever they choose as long as they're not hurting anybody else, and people tend to hang out with like-minded individuals instead of trying to stamp non-like-minded individuals out of existence. There's absolutely no central government that tries to enforce a majority worldview on everyone -- everybody does their own thing and it works.
Government is an instrument of the collective will. Given a choice, people move away from the kind of anarchy that you propose.
No.
This is anarchy:
1. Do whatever. No law exists.
This is Libertarianism:
1. You're free to choose your own path in life as long as you don't deny anyone else the right to do the same.
If you can't see the difference, you're truly an idiot, and I'm wasting my time talking to you.
What exactly can they do to you, if you talk to
such a person?
Libertarianism is centered around the "will of the people" concept, but it takes it one step further -- it's about the will of each invididual person, and not just the will of the majority. The United States Constitution is a generally Libertarian document, and the United States was founded on generally Libertarian ideas. It's not quite true Libertarianism (which has never been implemented on a large scale except on the Internet), but it's close. The foundation of the United States government isn't just "majority rule", it's a combination of "majority rule" and "minority rights." The majority can do as it chooses, but not at the expense of the rights of the minority. True Libertarianism takes the combination of "majority rule" and "minority rights" just one step further by eliminating "majority" and "minority", and just having individuals -- individuals who are free to carve out their own path in life without being told how they have to live.
Under your idea of how government should work, solely based on "majority rule" without "minority rights," if 51% of the population believed it was okay to shoot homosexuals on sight, then it would be perfectly okay to shoot homosexuals on sight.
In fact, in your world, if 51% of the population believed it was okay to shoot homosexuals on sight, then you would consider it immoral to oppose shooting homosexual on sight, or to try to convince people that they shouldn't support shooting homosexuals on sight, because opposing the murder of homosexuals or trying to convince people that the legal murder of homosexuals is wrong would be classified as "defying the will of the majority."
Well, here's a shocking newsflash for you: speaking out against the morality of the majority viewpoint is not the same as being opposed to the concept of majority rule. You can still believe in majority rule but fight to change what the majority believe.
Since you believe so strongly in majority rule and that the "will of the people" should never be questioned, what will you do on the day when 51% of the population is Libertarian? Will you suddenly turn Libertarian yourself, and admit you were wrong, or will you oppose the majority Libertarian ideals and prove yourself wrong when you claimed to support "the will of the people"?
Those who claim it's wrong to question "the will of the majority" are probably only of that opinion because they're currently in the majority themselves. You're most likely a straight white middle- or upper-class male Christian/athesist/agnostic, and since you are the majority, that's why you believe "the majority must never be challenged."
So, just answer this one question. If "the majority" (50.0001% of the population, let's say) believe it's perfectly okay to murder homosexuals because homosexuality is morally wrong, and it becomes national law that it's okay to murder homosexuals, what do you do?
WHAT DO YOU DO???
Do you act proud that "the will of the people" is being done and homosexuals are being murdered legally, or do you protest the murder of homosexuals and renounce your blind worship of "the will of the people"?
The will of the people must be counterbalanced by the rights of all individuals within a society, not just the spoiled rich whiteboys driving their fat white asses around in their giant SUVs. How much gas mileage do you get on that thing, anyway?
If that's your concept of Libertarianism, then it's far too simplistic. The limited nature of our world simply means that rights always conflict. If I don't want to hear what you want to say, then your right to free speech has infringed upon my right to solitude. Your right to make bombs infringes on my right to feel safe. Etc etc etc. It's only possible for one person to have absolute freedom - that's when he has absolute power and everyone else just has to be oppressed by his wishes.
What the previous poster is saying (although I agree that the view he espouses appears to be extremely theoretical and naive) is that government is the expression of the people. In case you've forgotten, that's what the word democracy means - the rule of the majority. Yes, the majority can be oppressive of the minority. All the constitional protections of the minority ? They can be changed with a sufficient vote of the majority (2/3 of the voters, 2/3 of the states - that's how the First Amendment came about, remember ?).
What's the alternative ? If you prioritize the needs of the few of the wants of the many, then you have put the few in charge - that's what we call an oligarchy. If it's only your rights and freedoms that are absolutely protected - that's what we call a dictatorship. Would you prefer that ?
Any particular reasons why you are wondering?
But when I put a website online, people all over the world can access it. Does that mean that in your view I should be forced to comply with the laws of every country in the world, including countries restricting political speech, countries prohibiting women from being seen without veils, or countries with any number of other laws I don't even know about?
--Dan
Web Tips
Assuming they catch you, they can order the revocation of your license.
www.eFax.com are spammers
If a server with content is in one country and it's content is considered offensive or illegal in some way in another country there exists a problem of enforcement. Simply put, no nation has the power to create laws governing another nation or it's citizens.
One of the more famous pieces of legislature that falls under this category was Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. At the time of the proclamation, the Confederate States of America had already seceded from the United States, thus were a separate entity, yet the EP ordered the release of all slaves in the South (not the North). This was simply a Pr campaign that, at the time, was unenforcable(sp?).
If you would use that hand to hit reload more often, instead of vigorously masterbating to your favorite porn site, you might get fp once in a while. Focus, boy!
Here's one for the record.
/ ne wsid_1748000/1748398.stm
e ws id_1748000/1748398.stm
Gary Lauck is a Neo-Nazi who has been convicted and jailed in Germany for distributing Neo-Nazi stuff from his home in Nebraska. He was arrested while in Denmark, and extradicted to Germany for the trial and prison term. So, for sending information from his home in one country to friends in a second country, he was arrested while visiting a third country. His actions included mailing pamphlets, as well as hosting a web site and sending email.
Now the German government wants to take a web page from him. The domain is www.bundesinnenministerium.com , which translates to Federal Interior Ministry.
There are two stories about it in the BBC's web page, here are the addresses.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/americas
and
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/n
(Notice one is from the the Americas section, the other from the Europe section of BBC News.
I'm not a Neo-Nazi myself, I think they are idiots, but they have the right to their idiotic opinions. If they are not hurting anyone, or threatening anyone, they should be allowed to have their little "We're better then them!" fantasy. Why should Germany have any more right to the site www.bundesinnenministerium.com than the US government has to www.whitehouse.com?
Now, if you hate Neo-Nazis, you might want him to lose the site just because you hate him. But from a "jurisdiction and defamation via the web" perspective, he has the right to keep the domain.
Seriously though, if you request (import, order etc) something which breaks the laws of the country you are importing it into, the reciever and not the shipper is liable. seems like you're "importing" the data, be it via a wire or if you order illegal porn on a CD.
Seems simple enough to me.
Principled Libertarians are for universal freedom, not just "absolute" freedom for some.
Freedom for everyone is itself self-limiting.
"The limited nature of our world simply means that rights always conflict. If I don't want to hear what you want to say, then your right to free speech has infringed upon my right to solitude. Your right to make bombs infringes on my right to feel safe. Etc etc etc."
Universal rights can not conflict, that's correct. In fact, that should be the litmus test for telling a right from a cheap wannabe imitation.
You don't have the "right to feel safe". It sure would be nice if everyone could "feel" safe and it's a good personal goal to have, but it can not be applied universally, so therefore it can not be a universal right.
On the other hand, the right to be safe from the intervention of others, that's a little better. This rule could potentially be applied without contradicting itself and with a little work I guess it could be applied universally.
Stephan
As a journalist I was hit by one of these little babies recently when I couldn't report on a sensational court case in South Australia for our Ezine, even though I work in Victoria. The suppression order related only to works published in South Australia. Really unfair I thought, considering media published the incident across the world, and anyone with an internet enabled computer could access their stories, including jurors in South Australia. But because I live in Australia, I would have been in contempt of court and could have gone to gaol indefinitely.
Defammation is a different issue though. If someone in an internet chat room called me a paedophile, and that stopped me getting a job, I think I would be pissed off. Any defence that they published the article from the USA, and didn't really intend any malice with the untrue allegations would not wash.
There is also a problem with cultural variants that need to be respected. Calling someone a Christian would not be defamatory in Australia, even if they were a Muslim, but if I call someone a Christian in a chat room, who is locked up by the Taliban, and they faced the death penalty, I can understand the argument that cross-border sensitivities must be respected.
For those interested, the last example is not just made up. When two Australians were locked up by the Taliban, and were accused of being Christian missionaries, media companies voluntarily omitted information from the group's website that they were a Christian organisation spreading the Good News.
If the pattern goes 9am, 10am, 11am, why isn't noon 12am?
On one hand, it's somewhat disheartening to be a United States citizen, what with the things they did to poor Dmitry.
:)
;)
On the other hand, for some reason, I don't think Uncle Sam's going to cough me up to the French just because they want to arrest me for saying French women tend to be hairy.
Rule of thumb, if you're planning to visit another country on vacation/etc. someday, just.. Don't say anything bad about that country.
One word: extradition. Unless a country permits trial in absentia (and to the best of my knowledge, America is one of the few that does) it is necessary to bring a person to the jurisdiction they are to be tried in. Unless an extradition treaty exists between the two countries involved this is generally not possible;ie Ronald Biggs. The exception to this is where one country is a highly militarized power and the other is a smaller, less developed nation; history is full of invasions in the name of "justice" (no, I'm not being topical, nor am I stating an opinion in any current confict).
The nature of the offence usually determines the value of extradition. Some examples (based on Australian case law):
1 You call me an ignorant moron - that's your opinion, you're entitled to it.
2 You call me a child-molesting moron - that's libelous, but thats a civil action, so I have to fund proceedings. Probably too expensive.
3 You obtain a mailing list of my clients (e- or snail) and send them messages saying that I'm a child molesting moron and they should never hire me again - libel and a breach of the Trade Practices Act (and possibly Copyright). Suddenly Australian statutory bodies come into play. Will that result in an extradition and trial? Probably not.
Why? Because it depends on international politics. For example, the US demands free trade from it's trading partners, but often fails to reciprocate due to internal politics. What makes anyone in this forum think that America would accept the kind poitical "slap in the face" allowing one of its citizens to be extradited for actions conducted on American soil? Do you think Stone & Parker are going to be sent to Iraq by a willing Dept. of justice to face trial for their portrail of Saddam Hussein? Those of you who said "yes", hold your breath and count to 1000.
As for the notion of "let the reader beware", I have to disagree. Its one thing to be sent a personal message (which, by definition cannot be libelous, since it isn't broadcast), it is another to see lies posted about oneself on a website. A website is, technically, a published document (with multimedia, obviously) - it is there, available for everyone to see. It therefore falls on the person controlling the web site to ensure that all information is correct (not just "to the best of my knowledge", or to the standard set by any other disclaimer). Sure, you have a choice not to read a site, just as you have a choice not to read a newspaper or a magazine, but the chances are other people will read that magazine, or newspaper, or website, and form an opinion (and thats the point). There should be two basic principles here - 1) Don't post unless you can confirm its true/have evidence & 2) Don't post angry.
I also don't think its the ISP's (or a country's govenment's) responsibility to ensure defamatory material doesn't appear, any more than a phone company is responsible for the content of your conversations. Also, imagine the jump in costs if ISPs had to keep a team of lawers to vet each and every web page. To use the US as an example again, what do you think would happen if every other country in the world decided all US content was potentially libellous (treasonous/unholy), and blocked all traffic? Hands up everyone who thinks that would make the Internet better (and here are your white masks and gowns). Exclusion by location won't work, just like exclusion by keyword won't ("My kids used to visit a charming little website about teddybears run by Virginia Higganbottom from Scunthorpe, but since I changed to AOL...")
Just a reminder that all of the legislation around the world introduced to regulate the internet is there because of the abuse of the capacity for direct global communication. The abuse came first - the laws followed. Responsible self-regulation is always preferrable to legislative intervention for private citizens.
Why is it called a "knee jerk" reaction when there's no "knee" involved?
> Assuming they catch you, they can order the
> revocation of your license.
Notice that said license was sold as a bill of goods to create an orderly use of bandwidth to prevent collisions among broadcasters, yet in fact is used to prevent free speech, which is to say, speech that harms those behind the gun, or harms the feelings of the idiot masses who vote for those in power.
"All representatives are busy. The estimated hold time is one..hundred..sixty..four..minutes." Detroit Edison, 02/01/02
Your question is similar to one that I have been researching for some time, in my role as an adjunct professor of E-Commerce. What is the impact of the Internet on governments?
There is a rich history of how governments have confronted new technologies in the past. It's the sort of history that I wish high schools would teach: some of the laws passed in response to new technologies are extremely funny. The introduction of steam engines, canals, railroads, the telegraph, repeating arms, the automobile--even the safety razor--emboldened legions of pompous politicians eager to satiate their constituents' desire to Put A Stop To This. And Put A Stop To This they did--until they realized that the next town over was benefiting from all the jobs building the railroad line, or manufacturers were locating plants across the state line to avoid their jurisdiction, or (the worst possible fate for a pol) people were just laughing at them and ignoring the law. (Through 1976, at least, it was illegal for a man in the State of Illinois to shave himself unless he was a licensed barber.)
There typically has been a pattern to how governments (the bureaucrats, the politicians, and the judiciary) come to grips with a new technology. The initial response typically is "Put A Stop To This". The next response is "Regulate It!"--generally meaning "slow it down," as the original cast of pompous pols is replaced by wannabe-graybeards urging "caution" and "restraint." As bureaucrats and politicians see wider acceptance of the technology the next step is natural: "How Can We Tax It?" The rules and requirements tend to get relaxed as the bureaucrats, etc., become comfortable with the technology, in a phase I call "Hey! This Could Be Useful." Ultimately, for extremely disruptive technologies, there is a phase we might call "We'd Better Get On The Bandwagon."
Railroads are a perfect example: in the 1830s and 1840s every politician was in the Put A Stop To This camp; by the later 1840s and early 1850s there was grudging acceptance, but still "restraint" and "caution". (There were, for instance, repeated debates about whether it was safe for the Post Office should use trains to move mail.) By the 1850s railroads were confronting a bevy of tax proposals: taxes on rights-of-way, taxes on locomotives, taxes on rail cars, and taxes on revenue. When the U.S. Army used railroads to bring fresh troops to Gettysburg--and won the battle--the utility of railroads was made manifest. Suddenly every politician was a closet railfan, and the pols fell over one another in their rush to champion, sponsor, or even subsidize the building of Yet Another Railway Line. By the late 1860s, up until the economic collapse of 1873, and then again in the later 1870s, the We'd Better Get On The Bandwagon phase was at its peak: rather than regulating or taxing railroads, politicians were working fiendishly to ensure that the railroad didn't pass them by. Towns with railroads lived, towns without railroads died.
The technology has changed--politicians have not. What has also changed--and what makes this process seem so much more contentious--is that the Internet has appeared in the public consciousness, and in your living room, at an extremely rapid pace. And the pace of change is only increasing. Meanwhile, the pace at which politicians (and bureaucrats and judges) move through the Put A Stop To This/Regulate It To Death/How Can We Tax It/Hey This Could Be Useful framework hasn't changed much.
Which phase are we in?
I think we're definitely in the Put A Stop To This phase, and we're going to stay there for a long time--partly because the pace of change means that there is always something new to put a stop to, but also because the growing reach of the Internet means that there is always a fresh crop of less-than-clueful politicians just a router hop away. When the Internet finally got to Afghanistan, the Taliban...Put A Stop To It.
The Next Phases
As some officials begin to comprehend the impact of the Internet, we begin to see the phase of "caution" and "restraint." In the U.S., for instance, we have federal programs to wire every school and public library for Internet access--but politicians still fuss and fume about "Net Nanny" programs and how to write laws that meticulously prevent librarians from just using a little common sense. State tax officials are hard at work trying to harmonize state sales tax laws in order to implement sales taxes on e-commerce purchases. In some places--a very few places--politicians and bureaucrats are even talking (NB: talking, not acting) about using community development funds to wire downtowns with fiber optic. These few--these very few--understand that this is the railroad question all over again: if you have cheap bandwidth, you will prosper; if you have little or no bandwidth, your town will die.
That Said, Let's Make Some Distinctions
Several people posting on this topic have brought up the Digital Millennium Copyright Act as an example of draconian law similar to the examples you mentioned. There are certainly aspects of the DMCA that fall into the Put A Stop To This phase--particularly issues like rules on defeating encryption, whereby "decrypting" something protected by ROT13 becomes a federal crime. (The best response to that, as with safety razors in Illinois, is publicity and ridicule.) But one of the major challenges facing governments--the bureaus, the courts, and the representatives--is the development of intangible property. Note that I'm explicitly not using the term "intellectual property"--the issue is broader, and different, than intellectual property laws. The Internet enables the instantaneous transfer of valuable merchandise across borders--municipal borders, state borders, and national borders. If I buy a copy of Opera 6.0 for example, I am "importing" software from Norway. Except--I actually import nothing. If I go to a website and pay $16 for MP3 files of eight of my favorite songs, I get something valuable (Econ 1A--it's valuable because I'm willing to pay for it). But I do not have even one more molecule than I owned before I started that download. That presents all kinds of problems: a huge portion of tax receipts depend upon various forms of excise taxes, and excise taxes depending upon physical property crossing physical boundaries. (Quiz: if I buy $34,000 worth of map data from a provider in Europe and retrieve the data by FTP, does the transaction get included in balance of payment statistics reported by the U.S. Dept. of Commerce? Nope.) As more and more commerce consists of file transfers and other forms of distributing intangible property, oodles of legal, financial, and tax issues appear. The DMCA has some dumb aspects--but it is at least a first attempt to come to grips with some of this issues.
Moving forward
As the world and the Internet community forge ahead, there will be ample opportunities to learn from other people's mistakes. When a judge in, say, Ohio prepares to issue a decision banning "hate speech" there may be an assistant who will point out that the speech in question is a fatwa issued in Iran, and the ruling might make the judge look as silly as that bozo judge in France.
There is another dimension
Regardless of whether, when, or how politicians around the world finally come to grips with the Internet, there will always be someone, somewhere, who wants to prevent it. With good reason: there are lots of cultures around the world that feel threatened by American movies, American music, American literature, and American attitudes about all sorts of things. And they--rightly--see the Internet as a conduit for all things American, and fear the consequences for their cultures. And that's an entirely legitimate fear--even with millions of users from other countries, the Internet culture is a mirror image of the American "frontier experience" in its wildest and wooliest. I think that's a good thing--but I'm an American. The Saudis, the Chinese, the Taliban, and a fool of a judge in Paris all disagree. There's an irony in the fact that a tool developed by the U.S. Defense Department will become the ultimate weapon of American cultural hegemony. And eventually the bureaucrats, courts, and politicians will have to come to grips with that.
In sum...
When pundits or pols in Austria, Australia, or Austin are fussing and fulminating about this Internet-based Crisis! or that, remember: this is just a phase. Pat them on the head, and tell that someday they will grow out of it.
V. Gravenreuth:
m l
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/23614.ht
Because of copyright protection he used to send letters to small businesses, e.G. used the protected word 'explorer' at their homepage!!!! Also 'Explorer' was cancelled from register, v. Gravenreuths is still working to fight free speech.
Nice diatribe, but you're greatly confused. There is a great degree of difference between assuring the rights of the minority and arguing that it ought to be legal to speed down residential streets at 100 mph, mix explosives in your apartment at the risk to all of your neighbors, and so on. It's not classical liberalism I have an objection to, it's modern fanatical LP-style ridiculous libertarian zealotry.
C//
You don't have the "right to feel safe".
But you do have a right to be free of an unreasonable risk of your own injury, demise, or ruination due to the negligent behavior of other human beings. This is why we have speeding laws, amongst other things.
Virtually no one wants people speeding on residential streets. This is only one example of the ridiculous extremes LP nutzos are willing to go. Nobody wants that, we'll never have that, get over it.
C//
So if 2/3 of the population belives it's okay to lynch African Americans or execute homosexuals, that's okay, right? Not only would you support the law, but you'd condemn the 1/3 of the population who opposes the murder of minorities, because they're "disrespecting the will of the majority"?
There's a name for people like you: it's "Nazi," or "bigot," or "hatemonger," or even more simply, "monster."
A monster is what you are.
And to correct the gaps in your historical education, let me just point out to you that the First Ammendment was not added to the Constitution through the Constitution's process of Constitutional ammendment. It was in the very first ratified version of the constitution. It wasn't in the first draft, but the first draft was never ratified.
Also for your historical information, the first ammendment didn't grant freedom of speech, it only acknowledged that people always had, and always will have, free speech and that the government intended to respect the right that already existed. Free speech was originally granted (if you swing that way) by God(s)/Goddess(es), or (if you don't swing that way) by Nature, or by the Human Condition, or by Rationality, or whatever you happen to believe in. No matter what you believe, you had the right to Free Speech ever since the creation and/or evolution of the human race, and all the United States Constitution does is acknowledge that right, it doesn't claim to grant it, because you can't give someone something they already have, all you can do is acknowledge that they have it and you're not going to try to take it away from them.
Democracy is great, and I support Democracy, but I support CONSTITUTIONAL Democracy, where the absolute rights every person has been born with since the inception of the human race are acknowledged and protected by the Constitution and not subject to oppression by popular opinion.
Let popular opinion decide anything it wants as long as the majority doesn't try to violate the inborn rights of a single person.
You probably wouldn't understand the whole "freedom" concept. Monster.
"We have a healthy and well-regulated society which the vast majority of us actually approve of on the whole if often not in the detail."
~Courageous, Slashdot, 2002.
"We have a healthy and well-regulated society which the vast majority of us actually approve of on the whole if often not in the detail."
~Adolf Hitler, German, 1940.
"We have a healthy and well-regulated society which the vast majority of us actually approve of on the whole if often not in the detail."
~Joseph Stalin, Russia, 1941.
"We have a healthy and well-regulated society which the vast majority of us actually approve of on the whole if often not in the detail."
~Fidel Castro, Cuba, every bloody day for the past century.
"We have a healthy and well-regulated society which the vast majority of us actually approve of on the whole if often not in the detail."
~Pol Pot, Cambodia, whenever it was.
"We have a healthy and well-regulated society which the vast majority of us actually approve of on the whole if often not in the detail."
~Apartheid Guy, South Africa, until recently.
"We have a healthy and well-regulated society which the vast majority of us actually approve of on the whole if often not in the detail."
~Taliban spokesman, Afghanistan, 2001.
"We have a healthy and well-regulated society which the vast majority of us actually approve of on the whole if often not in the detail."
~Bill Clinton, America, 1993-2001.
"We have a healthy and well-regulated society which the vast majority of us actually approve of on the whole if often not in the detail."
~John Ashcroft, America, 2001-2009.
"We have a healthy and well-regulated society which the vast majority of us actually approve of on the whole if often not in the detail."
~U.N. Secretary-General Bill Gates, Earth, 2010.
You claim that "the will of the majority" should be unquestionable. So if 50.001% of the population belives it's okay to lynch African Americans or execute homosexuals, that's okay, right? Not only would you support the law, but you'd condemn the 49.999% of the population who opposes the murder of minorities, because they're "disrespecting the will of the majority"?
There's a name for people like you: it's "Nazi," or "bigot," or "hatemonger," or even more simply: "monster."
Street owner says that it's his son, he's allowed to do it and you can fuck off and you're not allowed to walk or drive down the street any more.
So leave. It's his street. I personally am not 100% Libertarian, so I believe it's okay for government to own a few things like streets where the rules are set by a vote of the majority, but I don't think that it's anybody's (including the majority's) business what happens inside private homes. Do you really want someone else telling you what you can and can't do inside your own private home, assuming you keep the shades closed and you aren't putting anyone else at risk?
Libertarianism is the only political philosophy that allows people to be individuals. I'm a Libertarian (okay, only 97% Libertarian because I think it's okay for the government to own roads and streets in some cases) because I want to be an individual and not a slave to society, and I want to live my own life, not the life somebody else tells me I have to live, as long as I'm not hurting anyone else or putting anyone else at risk.
That's a bit of a pisser if your house fronts onto the street isn't it? You've just been jailed because breaking out of your jail would involve your instigating a threat of force against the street owner for which you can be shot.
You're talking about hypothetical extremes. Yes, if you take Libertarianism to absurd hypothetical extremes, you can come up with a silly scenario that nobody could survive in. Guess what? If you take Liberalism to an absurd hyptothetical extreme, you wind up with a silly scenario that nobody could survive in. If you take Conservativism to a silly hypothetical extreme, you wind up with a silly scenario that nobody could survive in. If you take Socialism to a silly hypothetical extreme, you wind up with a silly scenario that nobody could survive in. If you take Democracy to a silly hypothetical extreme, you wind up with a silly scenario that nobody could survive in.
You've proven nothing. Guess what? If you take any political philosophy to a silly hypothetical extreme, you wind up with a silly scenario that nobody could survive in.
What you ignore is the "common sense" factor. People are, at least to an extent, reasonable. Your absurd hypothetical scenarios are not. And something tells me, neither are you.
Me: "You must consume Oxygen in order to survive."
You: "But what if I consume so much Oxygen that my lungs burst? What if a poisonous snake crawls into my mouth when I open it to breathe? What if what I think is Oxygen turns out to actually be Carbon Monoxide? What if a witch places a Voodoo curse on me that'll cause me to melt into purple goo if I take a single breath?"
Me: "What are you saying?"
You: "I refuse to consume Oxygen!"
You: *dies*
Me: "Moron."
This reminds me of a Libertarian bumper sticker. It says: "I'm Pro-Choice on EVERYTHING."
Are YOU Pro-Choice?
If you don't want people driving past your house at 100mph, live on a street owned by a person who has values similar to your own, and who'll set a speed limit on his street.
If you do want people driving past your house at 100mph, or you want to drive at 100mph down the street amongst people who share your passion for driving quickly through residential areas, live on a street owned by someone who has values similar to your own, and who won't enforce a speed limit on the street.
Under my system, you have choice, and you can live in whichever environment suits your personal tastes
Under your system, you only have one option, the one option that "they" decide is the right option for you. How do they decide what's best for you?
If you don't want explosives in your apartment building, rent an apartment where the rules don't allow explosives, and where the landlord has similar values to your own.
If you do want explosives in your apartment, or wish to create explosives yourself and share your hobby with other like-minded people, rent an apartment where the rules do allow explosives, and where the landlord has similar values to your own.
Under my system, you have choice, and you can live in whichever environment suits your personal tastes.
Under your system, you only have one option, the one option that "they" decide is the right option for you. How do they decide what's best for you?
Now, since there are very few people who want to drive 100mph through a residential area, there will probably wind up being very few street owners who are members of that group, and hence very few streets that allow driving 100mph. But those who do want to drive 100mph through a residential area can buy their own streets and build houses on those streets, and sell those houses to other people who want to drive 100mph through a residential area, and then they can do so and not jeapordize anyone except each other. All the people in the area will have moved there knowing the risks -- in fact they'll have moved there because of the risks, since the street was founded on the idea of driving 100mph through a residential area.
They're doing their own thing on their own property, and anybody who has a problem with it doesn't live there.
Similarly, those with a passion for explosives can build their own apartments a safe distance away from anyone else, and rent those apartments to like-minded people, and build all the explosives they want (I admit, they should probably be restricted to explosives with a blast radius smaller than the distance to the nearest person who isn't an explosives freak), putting nobody at risk except themselves, because they knew the risks -- in fact, they moved into the apartment because of the risks, because it was the only place where they could build explosives.
Most likely, the people in the above two groups, in a Libertarian society, would exterminate themselves out of the gene pool within a few generations. In a fascist state, people are forbidden from doing dangerously stupid things, but some of them do them anyway, and people die. The people who don't do them pass their stupidity down to future generations (surely your mother and father must be familiar with this concept). In a Libertarian society, stupid people can do dangerously stupid things only when they're in an environment where their dangerously stupid stunts can only kill themselves or other dangerously stupid people. Thus, the dangerously stupid people will kill themselves and each other, but no innocent people, and dangerous stupidity will be bred out of the gene pool.
Why do you hate choice?
> "I'm writing a legal article on jurisdiction and defamation via the web. There seems to be a trend in various national courts (eg the UK, Australia, Malaysia) to treat the place where a web-page is *read* (ie browsed) as the place of publication of its contents,
That's just silly, if I read apple.com.au , it's obviously published in australia.
> regardless of where the page or the server serving it are located.
what if someone publishes a site on an american server written by an australian author for a new zealand web portal?
And then what if someone from the Cook Islands reads that page?
> This has far-reaching ramifications, as it opens up anyone publishing anything on a web-site (and also Usenet) in America to the more restrictive domestic laws of other countries --
Usenet has no central location, it's a global network regardless of which channel it's on.
> not just for slander/libel/defamation, but also treason, lese-majestie, hate speech and general censorship laws (think Yahoo and France).
That would be pointless, for example what about websites about kashmir?
You have indians attacking pakistanis, pakistanis attacking indians, are people really going to file libel cases against citizens of enemy nations?
> Does anyone have personal, practical experience of being threatened by foreign governments or government bodies for material put up on the Net? Or is it just an inevitable consequence, to be overcome by geographical tagging of a browser's location (think icravetv.com) or similar measures?"
I have been personally threatened by members of Echelon for the material I have.
I have promised to release some very high grade encryption software on the Net if I am hassled again.
> "Many people assert that informed Netizens see this as a way of fragmenting the Net, of imposing geographic boundaries and destroying part of the fundamental location-agnostic nature of the web and the Net --
There is no way to impose geographical boundaries on the net, you'd need DNS or IP address censoring in place and that wouldn't handle new IP numbers or new protocols.
> ie, that it's a Bad Thing. Is this really so? Does anyone see this as a good, or at least a neutral, thing?"
It's a Bad Thing. However, it's easy to get around on legal, technical and practical grounds.
- Kaos games and encryption systems developer
I refer to there as being fanaticism and whacky zealotry throughout the LP, and you come up with a rebuttal like this? I suppose it was only a matter of time before you demonstrated a genuine Prozac moment. Please. Do continue. LOL.
C//
And yet, you still avoid try to support your position with facts just the sad old state-ist rhetoric which was disproved hundreds of years ago when people started to become enlightened and understand the concept of Freedom.
This is basically how this conversation has gone so far:
Me: I believe people should be Free.
You: I believe that if 50.001% of the population believes it's okay to murder black people, it's okay to murder black people, and if you think it's wrong to murder black people, you're evil for trying to usurp the will of the majority.
Me: You're wrong. *refutes every one of your points*
You: LA LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU
Me: *proves you wrong, again*
You: U SUK U SUK U SUK U SUK U SUK
Me: *uses evidence and logic to disprove everything you said (which was very little beyond "U SUK HA HA HA") and prove that I'm right and that you're a danger to society*
You: NAH NAH U R STUPID D00D HA HA HA HA HA
Me: *asks you a series of questions which prove you're an idiot*
You: *refuses to answer my questions because you know they'll make you look like an idiot*
Me: Do you have ANY grasp on the concept of logic?
You: Me no what u say? Hoo u? Huh?
Me: That's what I thought.
If you ever decide to stop ranting like a moron and try to answer my logic and facts with some logic and facts of your own, give me a call. Until then, in case you're wondering why the world treats you like a child, it's because you act like a child. Maybe if you ever learn to behave like an adult, someday someone somewhere may have half an ounce of respect for you.
Doubtful, though.
If you ever decide to stop ranting like a moron and...
The one with the page-long diatribes is you and not me. The one who is acting like a child because you can't get what you want is you and not me. Contrary to what you say, you have not presented any "logic" (sic). What you've done is espoused a view point loudly. There have been no premises followed by observations of fact followed by deductive steps. Using the word "logic" as if it would allow you to win an argumentative point without actually understanding what logic means isn't going to win you any points.
By all means, continue with your ranting.
C//
Since it has at least that useful function, your thesis is voided.
Zero Sum (don't amount to much). [root@localhost]
I'm only going to reply to this one post of yours, because you're basically saying the same thing like a broken record in every one of your posts recently.
Why do you refuse to answer my questions?
You know that you've been proven wrong, because you refuse to answer this question:
If 50.001% of society believed it should be legal to murder racial minorities and homosexuals, would you support the murder of racial minorities and homosexuals? Would you openly condemn those who speak out against the murder of racial minorities and homosexuals, because those who speak out against the murder of racial minorities and homosexuals are defying "the will of the people"?
You seem unable to provide a "yes" or "no" answer to this question, because you know that either answer will prove you wrong. So you act like a coward and hide behind your veil of "neener neener I can't hear you."
Either you WOULD support the murder of racial minorities and homosexuals because it's "the will of the people," in which case you're a monster, or you would oppose the murder of racial minorities and homosexuals, in which case you've proven you don't believe your own absurd "majority opinion over-rules human rights" philosophy.
Nazi Germany was a Democracy. More than 50% of the population of this Democracy supported the murder of racial minorities and homosexuals.
Are you supporting the actions of the Nazi Party, because they had "the mandate of the people," or will you condemn them and retract your statement that "the mandate of the people" always supersedes human rights?
As long as you refuse to answer the question, everyone will know that you're just a coward who doesn't know himself and doesn't know what he believes. You may disagree with what I say, but at least I know who I am. You don't even have the courage you provide an e-mail to Slashdot -- you're just an Anonymous Coward who somehow managed to find the "Register Account" button.
Finally, Mr. Wiseguy, exactly what logic have YOU presented? Exactly which arguments have YOU made? All I've seen is childish ranting about how much better you think you are than other people. Am I ranting? Maybe. Am I being illogical? I considered the possibility. I called up some guys at my state Libertarian party and asked them if I was being illogical, and they said no.
Maybe you should try reading some Libertarian documents. Anything written by Thomas Jefferson, for example.
Or pick up a copy of the LP newsletter. You might learn something.
No political philosophy with a fucking newsletter could be all bad.
Furthermore, we have a voice, and can convey our beliefs to our fellow men.
That's what I've been doing. Most people get it. You don't. There will always be people in the world who just don't understand the most basic concepts you try to convey to them. I don't know why I'm wasting my time with one of them.
Why are you allowed to convey your beliefs to your fellow man, but I'm not allowed to convey my beliefs to my fellow man?
Surveys show that roughly 41% of Americans have Libertarian ideals. It's been rising by about 1% per year. 9% more, about ten years, and we will be in charge.
And when we ARE in charge, when we ARE the majority, are you still going to say "I support the majority", or will our roles be fully reversed?
If you choose to reply to this (and I don't know why either of us are wasting our time), please answer my bloody question that you've refused to answer ten times now, and address specific points from this post, rather than saying "You're wrong, and that's it, neeeener neeeener," because that just makes you look like an idiot.
I'm not asking for compliance with rogue states. Hell, I didn't even say all "legitimate" governments. I said "democratic." This would not include, for instance, Saudia Arabia, China, or Cuba.
Also (and I'm exercising my freedom to name call here), not one post, with the exception of those by hogsback, has made an argument that would hold up in a logic or rhetoric class.
Can I bum a sig?