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

just dumb

[retards]

I really wonder about laws of this kind. Do the lawmakers really think about the implications of this? I don't mean that "Big Brother"-shit, I mean, people will not abide by this law because it is too cumbersome. People will not archive every revision of their personal homepage just because they happen to have a small webserver and the law says they have to. I sure as hell won't. Come arrest me.

This kind of civil disobedience may seem trivial, but what happens when lots of people lose respect for the law in other areas because they deem (correctly) that the lawmakers are totally clueless about modern society?

When will politicans realize we cannot have an Orwellian government AND an informed and educated population AND a market economy at the same time? IDIOTS!

Re:just dumb

[leviramsey]

Warning: rant ahead...

When will politicans realize we cannot have an Orwellian government...

I'm getting fucking tired of all this "Orwellian" bullshit, and the ease with which people, of all political stripes throw that name around without any idea of what Eric Blair (aka George Orwell) actually thought.

The fact is that anyone who bothers to look at Orwell's writing can find an idea that they can applaud. For instance, Orwell was opposed to having India as a colony of the UK ("In order that England may live in comparative comfort, a hundred millions Indians must live on the verge of starvation -- an evil state of affairs, but you acquiesce in it every time you step into a taxi or eat a plate of strawberries and cream"), but he did not believe India was capable of governing itself. He found Hitler personally appealing ("I have never been able to dislike Hitler... [he] grasped the falsity of the hedonistic attitude to life [which is the attitude of] nearly all Western thought... certainly all 'progressive' thought."), using terms that were eerily similar to those in England and France who endorsed fascism. He thought that Britain should not get involved in war against Germany and advocated planning "illegal anti-war activities." However, as soon as Hitler and Stalin signed the non-aggression pact, he flip-flopped, accusing British anti-war intellectuals of "sabotage"; of having been "Europeanised"; of sneering at patriotism; of weakening the morale of the morale of the English people.

Politically, Orwell was a revolutionary Socialist. He advocated a Socialist revolution in England, and a violent one if that was required. He viewed Hitler's success as the proof of the superiority of the planned economy. He wrote, "It is not certain that Socialism is better than Capitalism, but it is certain that, unlike Capitalism, Socialism solves the problems of production and consumption. However Orwell thought that, while a classless society would be made, the monarchy would continue.

The worst part of Orwell's legacy is providing a new vocabulary for slippery-slope arguments. If ideas are to stand or fail based on their logically possible consequences, than there would be no ideas, because every idea is, ultimately against life itself, if it is taken far enough.

Of course, those who like to use language inspired by Orwell, often times prove that they never read Orwell. 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.

One gets the impression that Orwell's only objection to totalitarianism and propaganda was stylistic; that only because the language they use is ugly are they evil.

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?

Ohmigod!

[gmhowell]

You guys don't even read the stories half the time, now you're supposed to read every comment?!

The background

[Caid Raspa]

The Finnish parliamentary elections will be held in a few months (around 16.3). So the politicians are busy, trying to show that they have done something, and deserve re-election.

A mall was bombed last year. (try googling for "Myyrmanni bomb") Several people got killed, including the bomber. It turned out that the bomber was active poster on several discussion forums. Some of these were crackpot forums, and one was for people interested in explosives. The moderator of the explosives forum got arrested, but was released afterwards.

Another point is that the Finnish telecom, (Sonera) got thoroughly blasted by an anonymous book first published on the web. The book seemed credible enough, and later a police investigation showed that the security department of Sonera had been scanning the e-mail and the phone calls of the employees, without their consent. Probably this was done by a pissed-off employee. However, a big company got in trouble because the net allowed fast spreading of the book, and there was no way to press the publisher.

The outcome is logical, as the politicians and voters do not understand the net. Large campaign financiers have an interest in regulating the net. Play with the fears of the people and get paid when you desperately need good press and money for the commercials.

I'm getting more and more ashamed for being Finnish.

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

...interprets censorship as damage and ...

[unitron]

Okay, so Finland won't have any decent web sites anymore, but do they think that they can either impose this law on sites in other countries (rotsa ruck) or block access for the entire nation to sites in other countries? What if someone makes a long distance call to a dial up provider in France or Sweden or wherever? (Yeah I know that gets expensive really fast but some people will do it anyway.) Even China's having trouble keeping their people from checking out un-authorized sites, how's a country like Finland where the populace doesn't fear a bullet in the back of the head for any little infraction going to handle the uproar over blocked sites? It's not as though they can keep people from finding out that there are sites to which they are being denied access.

already de facto situation in some EU countries

[metalpet]

There has been at least one court case in France where a webmaster was found guilty for having illegal speech on his website. The speech in question was located on a forum, and wasn't put there by the webmaster.
This effectively means that anybody who puts up an unmoderated forum in France is taking a chance.

It didn't require extra laws, and probably didn't make a lot of headlines, but it's a reality.

http://www.homo-numericus.bonidoo.net/article.ph p3 ?id_article=169
http://vulgum.org/libre/article.p hp3?id_article=25 8