FInland Proposes Editorial Culpability for Web Content

Sandstorm writes "Electronic Frontier Finland ry has an interesting article about a proposed law in the Finnish parliament on liabilities in public communications. Among other alarming things, the proposed law would require all web publications to have an editor-in-chief, who would have a criminal responsibility for all material published in his publication. That would include discussion on web boards and force editors on sites like /. preview and censor all comments before displaying them."

Comments

A change in landscape

[Twylite]

While I don't support a law like this, and really don't like what it would do to my favourite addiction, the effects could be interesting in push technology forward in a way that sorts of a lot of related legal problems (including responsibility, copyright, etc).

I have long thought that web forums were a step backwards. They are often slow, the interface is limited, and in general you have little control over the forum's functionality. Compare this to Usenet or BBS-style mail and forums, where your client provides the functionality needed.

The first step we need to take is to a distributed usenet-type system. Instead of web-interfaced forums, we have a lot of different news servers, which are not connected in a hierarchy. NNTP is also suitable as it is, although the servers would need some work to make the groups and articles more manageable, and allow a system for ratings.

The second step is to get away from centralised storage. A host site has an initial article and a storage index, which is a collection of links to a whole lot of other sites -- one per poster in fact. The poster's client posts the article to their "home" server, and notifies the host site about the relationship of that article to the discussion.

Now the host is merely publishing a short comment, and linking to a huge amount of discussion on that comment, where each part of the discussion resides with its owner. The responsibility for their contribution, as well as copyright, is far more clear in this situation.

Well, that's my 2c. Damn, I wish I could get Slashdot in QNX ...

What we need (IMNSHO) is a distributed usenet-type system

Re:just dumb

[retards]

I wasn't refering to George Orwell's personal political ideas, but rather to the system he presented in 1984 (which I have read). I think that that is what most people mean, just like when I say rock n' roll, I mean the music, and not the 1950's slang for "fucking". There is a different vocabulary in spoken word and historical discourse.

The prime example is "Big Brother", which is generally used to mean a system of covert surveillance and manipulation, and oppression in democratic disguise. Nothing could be further than Big Brother; in 1984 all of that was overt; there was no disguising it.

There is no disguising in passing a law that infringes on privacy, either. It will be available in every law book. Also, you state that everything in 1984 was overt, which is false. In the book there was no real resistance: it was invented by the government to ensnare dissidents. The book that "told the truth about the opressive government" in 1984 was written by that same government! And that was THE secret, remember?