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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?"
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.
If I were tasked with the job of making a list of all the various chemical and narcotic substances your mother must have consumed while you were in the womb to result in you being born with a mind that can't even grasp the most basic fundamentals of logic, I feel the outcome would be woefully inadequate to fully explain all your faults as a human being. I could list cocaine, PCP, and rat poison, but that combination would merely result in a drooling lackwit (right on both those counts) who would still have some comprehension of how the world of thoughts and ideas works.
I will explain this very, very slowly in such a way that a child in preschool could understand it. Then, maybe that child can try to explain it to you.
In a Libertarian society, a person who is unhappy with the rules prevailing in an area is free to move amongst more like-minded people, or to buy his own plot of land (in my ideal world, everyone would have his own plot of land -- perhaps ~40 acres or so, and some sort of equine-asinine hybrid animal -- perhaps a member of your family), and live his own life on it the way he sees fit.
In a fascist society, the government owns everything. The government owns every plot of land, the government owns the air, the government owns the water, the government owns the dirt, and the government owns the trees. The government owns everything, including the people. The government enforces one single consistent set of rules everywhere, on everyone. Even people who think they own land actually don't -- the land really belongs to the government. It is currently illegal for a human being to own land; by order of the United Nations it is only legal for a Government to own land.
People who don't like it can't leave, because the government owns everything. Yes, there are other countries, but it is illegal to leave a country without both the permission of the country you are leaving and the permission of the country you are traveling to. Even if you "own" the land you are traveling from, and you "own" the land you are traveling to, you still need permission from the two governments that really own the two pieces of land -- and you.
Your inability to grasp even the most simple logical connections between two concepts amazes me. I suspect you're trolling, because I can't honestly imagine anyone being as stupid as you except on purpose, but I know there are people in the world who really are as stupid as you're acting. I don't know if you're actually one of those sub-idiots (in which case I have bleak hopes for the future of humanity), or whether you're a better-than-average troller (in which case I tip my hat to you, and grumble that you need to get a life).
The very point that makes Libertarianism the living embodiment of freedom and individuality is that if you don't like what someone is doing, you can leave, and go do your own thing, on your own property, with no interference from anyone, as long as you're not hurting anyone else.
In your fascist world, if you don't like what the government is doing, you have zero recourse, because the government is everywhere, and the government owns everything, and you can do nothing about it, because it is illegal for you to own sovereign property. Look at what happened with Sealand -- a human being tried to own land that didn't belong to any country, and just for trying to live his own life on his own property free of anyone else's influence so long as he is not hurting anyone else, he's constantly on the verge of being wiped out by a military strike. If you don't like society, you can't even go live alone on an island, because either that island belongs to a government, in which case you're not really "alone", or that island doesn't belong to any government, in which case you'll be nuked by the governments for trying to live your own life.
You value conformity, and you value intolerance of opposing views. I believe that's the dictionary definition of "bigot."
You still haven't answered the one question I've asked you to answer many many times now, because you are a coward and you are afraid to answer it. You know that if you do answer it, you'll be exposed for either a liar or a hatemonger or a troller, and probably all three.
If 50.001% of the people in society believed it should be legal to kill racial minorities and homosexuals, would you support them? Would you support the killings of racial minorities and homosexuals, and would you oppose the people who oppose the murders because they're "defying the will of the majority"?
If you answer "yes," you're either a hateful bigot of the worst type, or a particularly spiteful troller.
If you answer "no," you've just disproven your own position, making you either a liar and an idiot, or a particularly spiteful troller.
So, which is it? Multiple choice. Just like those tests in High School. Oh, wait, you didn't get as far as High School.