Where Are You Publishing?

AndrewRUK writes "A reporter for The Guardian is being prosecuted in Zimbabwe for a report that appeared on the newspaper's website, the newspaper writes in this report. If the case is successful, it would allow Zimbabwe's courts to apply the country's draconian media laws to any online publisher, putting reporters and editors at risk of arrest if they go to Zimbabwe, or any country with extradition treaties with Zimbabwe. Once again, we see a case which raises the question of which courts have jurisdiction over online publishing. Is a UK newspaper, with webservers in the UK, and a site accessable to anyone on the net, publishing only in the UK, or is it publishing everywhere where there's net access?" An issue that just doesn't seem to go away ...

Comments

Sklyarov

[AntiNorm]

putting reporters and editors at risk of arrest if they go to Zimbabwe

Sounds almost like the Dmitry Sklyarov case...

Re:Sklyarov

[evilquaker]

Best advice is to not go where they have sufficiently stupid laws.

Good idea... got any suggestions as to where that might be?

Re:Sklyarov

[DarkZero]

Best advice is to not go where they have sufficiently stupid laws.

Would you mind giving us an example of this place where they do not have sufficiently stupid laws? Does it happen to have a breathable atmosphere? I'd like to visit there some time.

If someone's stupid enough

[vegetablespork]

to travel to a country where they enforce their unjust laws against people who 'broke' them in a country where their actions weren't illegal . . . uh, never mind.

Interesting connection.

[Mike the Mac Geek]

Zimbabwe prosecutes people outside of it's borders for breaking internal laws.

Sounds a lot like the US and the Skylarov case huh?

Or DeCSS? Or any of the forthcoming lawsuits?

We are no better. I hate to say it, but it's true.

fault of Zimbabwe ISPs

[colmore]

simple:

the material is available in print in England and on English computers; it is therefore the fault of Zimbabwe's ISPs for connecting to the offending servers.

if nations want to censor the internet, they should do it themselves. it would be funny to watch them realize the futility of attempting to stop information.

Consider the government...

[swb]

Considering that Robert Mugabe is -- despite the stiff competition continent-wide -- the leading klepto-autocrat in Africa, is it any surprise? He's willing to steal elections and kill the only productive segment of his economy in the blantantly dishonest name of "land reform."

Why should it be at all surprising that he's willing to go after journalists who expose his regime? I suppose it is surprising to starry-eyed marxists who still buy into the collective bullshit of African anti-colonial revolution.

All the more shameful is Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu and the rest of the putatively democratic ANC's refusal to speak out against Mugabe and his thugs.

Maybe now that western journalists are actually starting to get a firsthand taste of Mugabe-style government they'll wipe the haze from their eyes and start doing the kind of reporting that might help bring an end to the politically correct refusal to believe that an African govenrment can do no wrong, especially if it involves whitey getting his.

Re:Consider the government...

[Goonie]

All the more shameful is Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu and the rest of the putatively democratic ANC's refusal to speak out against Mugabe and his thugs.

Yeah, it's pretty disappointing, but to be fair it's a lot easier to say those kinds of things when you don't have to live next door to them. The Australian government is, for instance, mealy-mouthed about Indonesia's corruption and thuggery, mainly because there are certain things we need from Indonesia (like not letting drug and people smugglers through, and shutting down Al-Queda cells there) and if we don't kiss their arse occasionally they are petulant enough to stop doing those things to spite us. Similar things probably apply WRT Zimbabwe and SA. They did have the courtesy to go along (once beaten round the head by the UK, NZ, and to a lesser extent Australia) with the suspension of Zimbabwe from the British Commonwealth (which says to the world that they now regard Zimbabwe as undemocratic).

Of course there's the issue that some in the ANC, whatever the leadership knows, probably have a sneaking sympathy for people sticking it to rich white landowners.

Re:Consider the government...

[ArsSineArtificio]

Although they don't want violence or anything harsh they still believe that Africa is a continent for Africans - not Englishmen or Frenchmen. And it shouldn't be - the only thing whites have brought to Africa is racism and their own forms of control over the lands true owners.

Oh, please.

If somebody had written "Europe is a continent for Europeans - not Africans or South Asians... And it shouldn't be - the only thing coloreds have brought to Europe is crime and welfare dependency" you'd go from 0 to self-righteous in half a second.

Peddle your hypocritical racist twaddle somewhere else.

Re:Consider the government...

[raistlinne]

the only thing whites have brought to Africa is racism and their own forms of control over the lands true owners.

So you don't believe that cars, telephones, mass-produced books, vaccines, television, movies, cheap clothing (i.e. mass-produced clothing such as denim jeans), or computers are things? Don't get me wrong, I don't approve of one group attacking another and subjugating it, but you're going a bit overboard in the other direction, don't you think?

Okay, then

[TrumpetPower!]

The new measures come on top of recently passed security laws, which state that journalists can be prosecuted for criticising Mr Mugabe and his government.

Robert Mugabe, dictator-in-chief of Zimbabwe, is a pusillanimous pipsqueak. His male member is dwarfed in comparison to his cockroach-sized brain. The stench of his breath makes granite crumble. His moral integrity is challenged only by that of a Microsoft lawyer. He rapes newborns with curling irons.

His government is composed entirely of weak-willed wusses, totally incapable of thinking for themselves. This, combined with Mr. Mugabe's stunning intellectual shortcomings, clearly explains the entire fiasco.

Need I continue?

b&

Hard to prove in the US; easy in many other places

[billstewart]

Libel is hard to prove in the US, because we have both old and new legal traditions making it difficult. That's not the case in many other countries

• Many countries have laws against libelling the government or the ruling party, which are infinitely abusable.
• Many British-derived legal systems don't do that, but do still make it easy for individuals to win libel cases.

US traditions are inherited from several cases in the British Colonies in North America

• Truth as a defense - John Peter Zenger was a newspaper publisher in New York who wrote things about the British governor that the Gov didn't like, and got sued for libel. Zenger argued successfully to the jury that while the Gov may not like what he said, what he said was true, and saying so shouldn't be punishable.
• Jury limitations on convictions - William Penn was accused of illegally preaching Quakerism, and the jury acquitted, because they believed the law to be unjust, following the traditions that had been gradually evolving under English Common Law. The judge threw them in jail to get them to change their minds, they appealed to a higher judge and got released, which substantially strengthened precedents about juries' ability to judge the law as well as the facts, and in the case of libel laws, this particularly affects a juries likelihood not to convict someone for libel even if the plaintiff really really doesn't like what was said about him.

Ummmmm...

[Anonymous Admin]

I hate to be the one to tell you this, but you are probably at risk if you go to Zimbabwe, no matter who or what you are.

Extradition

[Joe Decker]

IIRC, usually extradition only applies for crimes that are recognized as such by both countries. Clearly that would be rarely true in the case of these particular laws.

Endemic + accelerating problem of communications

[billstewart]

This case is yet another symptom of an endemic and accelerating problem of governments' inability to deal with rapid, widespread open communications. Governments' authority and jurisdiction has traditionally been related to geography, and social values, which depend on communications patterns, have also generally cohered around geography - most people only communicate with people "near" them, and they mostly stay put most of the time, though there are major exceptions (emigration, large-scale wars, Vikings, colonizers, and more peaceful traders, Gypsies), but usually there's a strong correlation between governments, societies, and markets, and the kinds of laws governments can enforce are limited by the values of those societies. As communications get out of control, questions of jurisdiction get muddled and the traditional legal structures fail. The internet appears to be at least as disruptive as the cloth and shipping trade in medieval Europe - will it become a purely independent jurisdiction (ala John Perry Barlow's Declaration, or the evolution of commerce law), or some hybrid strongly or loosely subject to local control, and how will we resolve the demands of some people to make the laws equal to the most restrictive laws anywhere and of other people to make them equal to the least restrictive?

Controlling public access to information is a much more resource-effective means of social control than direct military/police action, so it's especially serious for people like Mugabe, but it's a serious problem for governments everywhere. They have enough trouble dealing with effective postal systems and telegraphs, which can often communicate faster than censorship can react, but pre-Internet broadcast media such as traditional newspaper publishing and radio/tv cost enough that most broadcast news is local or at least controllable

• Newspapers cost enough and carry enough local news that most people read local papers, which can be censored or bullied, and occasional issues of wide-market papers like the NY or London Times or South China Morning Post can have their local distributions squelched for a day if needed
• Local radio and TV stations have been government-regulated in most jurisdictions, either as government-owned monopolies or at least licensed in ways that control content
• Short-wave broadcasting had largely been restricted by treaties, and mostly out-competed by television.
• The growth of satellite television in the last decade or so is a serious threat to government opinion control, but at least it's run by a few big corporations that tend to push hierarchical homogenized values and ignore local issues outside their owners' main markets, so it's a slower-moving threat that it could be - the real impact is often on cultural and economic values rather than directly rocking the boat.

But the Internet is just there - once you've got it, you've got access to everything and tools for finding the things you want, and language differences may fragment it somewhat, but not only does much of the world speak English, Chinese, Spanish, or French, but the expatriates that you most wish would stay away and leave you alone now have a much easier time reaching your subjects, speak your local languages, and care about your local issues.

Even in more liberal countries that don't have vicious totalitarian-wannabee governments, the Internet is still disruptive to the cultural status-quo and sometimes to the government. Back during one of the Internet-rumormongering flaps (I forget if it was a Matt Drudge thing or a Who Shot Down TWA Flight 800 or some conspiracy thing), somebody asked Esther Dyson about the Internet encouraging this sort of thing, and she said that yes, it did, but that television was better for propaganda. We've seen a lot of resistance to Internet openness focused on cultural-value conflicts like pornography. In some places like the US, the issue might really *be* concern about pornography (e.g. Ashcroft covering up naked statues), but it's being used by other governments as an excuse to grab control of the Internet distribution before it totally gets out of hand - the Great Firewall of China and similar efforts are doomed in the long run, but it's about the only thing they can do if they want to keep any control over the information their people see.

Re:Background: Zimbabwe vs UK

[gehrehmee]

Isn't that exactly the point? International application of local laws brings anyone face to face with even the extremest political agendas of all countries involved.

We need a cyber-jurisdiction

[NewtonsLaw]

I've been saying this for many years but nobody really seems to listen...

Governments of the world need to wake up and realize that cyberspace (I hate that word) is just as real as the USA, Britain, Australia or any other country on the face of the planet.

What's needed are some "cyberspace treaties" that would work in much the same way as the various treaties that cover issues such as copyright, trademarks, patents, etc.

These treaties need only lay down the basic framework of laws needed to restrict users actions and preserve their rights while in "cyberspace."

If a country's right to connect to the Net was conditional on signing to such an treaty then we'd have a method of producing and enforcing consistent laws related to the Net and its (ab)use.

Stomping on spam would be a great start -- imagine if there were a set of basic anti-spamming laws to which all Net-connected countries had to agree to be bound (under threat of excommunication). When you got a spam from Korea -- you report the offense and if the Korean authorities were found to not be enforcing the law, they'd be in jeopardy of having the entire country disconnected.

Other important issues such as kiddy porn, defamation, etc could also be covered by such a treaty -- making it far easier to track down and arrest or extradite offenders.

Hey... the RIAA and MPAA seem to have been able to unofficially create just such a global network of enforcement -- so why can't the world's authorities and legislators watch and learn.

Don't get me wrong, I'm very much opposed to the introduction of bureaucracy and regulation in respect to Internet use. However, I'm also a realist and I acknowledge that there are some areas (kiddy-porn, spamming, etc) where we simply have to do something because not to act is to endorse the action of those who choose to spoil the Net for everyone.

everybody does it

[g4dget]

The US tries hard to impose its draconian laws in areas like computer security, child pornography, and copyrights on other countries. The US assists police in foreign countries with raids on their citizens, detains visitors to the US (viz the Adobe case), and seizes assets. And the UK (libel) and Germany (Nazi hate speech) are trying to do the same thing.

Given what restrictions powerful nations like the US, the UK, and Germany are trying to impose on speech in other countries, they really don't have any reason to complain when other countries try to do this as well. What they can do and should do is criticize is Mugabe, his regime, and his policies, independent of how those policies spill over into the Interne.

what a healthy comentary!

[Kz]

what surprises (and saddens) me is that such a non-content hate-driven commentary is at score:4 (insightful)

can i ask where is the 'Insight'?

i have no love for Zimbabwe government, and really think their actions are a shame to all humanity, but this kind of comments only make things worse.

The story was false

[snakecoder]

Interestingly enough, the story from the gaurdian turned out to be false. In some way I'm laughing because wouldn't it be nice if newspapers were held accountible for the truth. Anyway, I don't think speech should be a criminal case. Nobody should ever go to jail because they got the facts wrong. Liability via a lawsuit on the other hand ...

Re:Extradition treaty with Zimbabwe?

[ceejayoz]

If it's such a "simple minded view", then why did the US Congress write a bill legalizing an invasion of the Netherlands in case the proposed International Court tries to hold American citizens for war crimes?

Sounds like you haven't been keeping up with current events...

Exercises in missing the point

[Zeinfeld]

The issue that everyone manages to miss here is that the Guardian and the journalist in question do not have staying out of jail as their primary concern. The real issue is getting rid of Mugabwe and it is worth risking two years in jail to do that.

Mugabwe is currently isolated internationally. He is within a whisker of being kicked out of the Comonwealth. He has been given a public dressing down by Tutu and Mandela. Everyone knows that the recent election was stolen by fraud. Meanwhile Mugabwe is bankrupting the country by financing military expeditions in the Congo whose principal objective is to allow the military to enrich themselves through plunder.

In these circumstances the risk of extradition to Zimbabwe to stand trial for what you write in Slashdot is none too great. What is really going on here is a trial of strength. The problem with sending people to jail for criticism is that it tends not to work in the long run, as the dictators of eastern europe found out. Mugabwe can send critics to jail but in doing so he loses the thin veneer of democratic legitimacy on which his power ultimately rests.

The Skylarof case was completely insignificant on the scale of global politics. The issue in Zimbabwe is democracy or dictatorship.

Where are you?

[The Monster]

if they're in their home country.

Well, if it weren't for precedents like Manuel Noriega and Salman Rushdie, that would be all there is to it. The question of "where you are" when you're online has troubled me since I ran a BBS back in prehistoric days, (when a sysop in California could be charged with violating laws in Tennessee without ever having done a thing there.) and the best answer I've ever been able to come up with is this:

The Guardian didn't publish this information in Zimbabwe, the people who downloaded it did. By typing "http://www.guardian.co.uk..." into their browser, or clicking on a link that did it for them, those people imported the Evil Bytes into Zimbabwe's jurisdiction. Meldrum's attorney should question the police officers with respect to the chain of custody and determine definitively who actually sent the HTTP GET request to the web server, then turn to the judge and make a motion to dismiss, as by the Prosecution witnesses' own testimony someone other than his client is responsible for those bytes being in Zimbabwe.

What about the staff of "The Onion"??

[borgheron]

Given than *everything* "The Onion" publishes is trumped up false, or just downright humerous, the fact that China (see previous article on slashdot) mistook a story from the Onion as real might mean that the staff of the The Onion could be looking at serious time if they every go to Zimbabwe. :)

GJC

Re:Extradition treaty with Zimbabwe?

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm... trial by jury. That basically means that the ruling of the court depends on a bunch of fools picked up from the street who have no knowledge of law or juridical procedures. The international court have several judges iirc which imho is better since they are trained in law. A person who went to law-school is much more likely to put aside political and racial prejudice in order to uphold the law.

In Sweden there are more commoners (these are elected for some time by the local municipal authorities) than judges at the lowest courts. Of course, having them elected by the authorities will put a political colour on the courts ruling, and this system is actually worse than the US system. This system is clearly bad (imho judges shall have a stronger vote in the rulings) and to take an example: when the Swedish prime minister was shot dead in Stockholm in the 80's a man called Christer Pettersson was charged with murder. He was ruled guilty in the lowest court, any person who could think could of course see that he would not be convicted in the higher court, this due to the fact that all the judges laid "vote" that he was not guilty. The proofs were to weak to hold. All the commoners argued that he was guilty. Because that the common people outnumbered the judges he was convicted. When the higher court took the case he was freed due to the fact that in the higher court the judges outnumber the commoners. This was actually the correct decision because the proofs did not hold any substance.

Have you any idea of how many cases I've heard of in the US in which innocents have been convicted, sometimes to death and the only real evidence have been speculations.

The point is: don't bash on a juridical system that is different than yours, no system is perfect, and just because that the US have trial by jury, the entire world shouldn't.

I am not claiming that the US system is inferior, I'm also not claiming that the international courts or Swedens system is better. They are all different systems, they all have flaws and they all have good sides.

--
Mattias

Re:Rich compared to what?

[HiThere]

Because they were born there, and don't have anywhere else to live. Because they "own" the land that they work, and can't take it with them if they move, and can't sell it even if they want to. And because they don't know what it's like anywhere else, so they're scared.

This is why any group that a government doesn't like stays around to be killed instead of fleeing immediately. And governments know this, and take all possible advantage of it.