Slashdot Mirror
Europe To Force Right of Reply On Internet Communication
David Buck writes "Today, the Council of Europe (an influential quasi-governmental body that drafts conventions and treaties) is to
finalize a proposal that would force all Internet news organizations, moderated mailing lists and even web logs (blogs) to allow a right of response to any person or organization they criticize. This would mean that you would be required to post the responses as well as authenticate their origin and make the responses available for some period of time. This will likely have a chilling effect on Internet communication (at least in Europe)."
Maybe it is only a US policy, but I thought "We will sue you!" letters from the organization's lawyers was the standard reply.
Any sufficiently advanced influence is indistinguishable from control.
Is this a requirement for newspapers in Europe? If not it seems exceptionally inconsitant. I imagine a lot of people (companies) are worried about their image on the net and want to force web sites to allow public responses in the same place as the source. I thought the US is having bigger problems with free speech, but this sounds very bad.
Developers: We can use your help.
At the time, Dalzell was serving on a three-judge panel that rejected the absurd Communications Decency Act as a violation of the First Amendment's guarantee of free expression.
Dalzell recognized that the U.S. government's true fear of the Internet was not indecency or obscenity, but hypothetical worries about how "too much speech occurs in that medium." Dalzell and eventually the Supreme Court realized that the best way to foster the soon-to-be spectacular growth of the Internet was to reduce government regulation--not to increase it.
document.write(' ');
Unfortunately, Europeans still haven't quite figured that out. The Council of Europe--an influential quasi-governmental body that drafts conventions and treaties--is meeting on Monday to finalize a proposal that veers in exactly the opposite direction. (It boasts 45 member states in Europe, with the United States, Canada, Japan and Mexico participating as non-voting members. Its budget is about $200 million a year, paid for by member governments.)
The all-but-final proposal draft says that Internet news organizations, individual Web sites, moderated mailing lists and even Web logs (or "blogs"), must offer a "right of reply" to those who have been criticized by a person or organization.
With clinical precision, the council's bureaucracy had decided exactly what would be required. Some excerpts from its proposal:
"The reply should be made publicly available in a prominent place for a period of time (that) is at least equal to the period of time during which the contested information was publicly available, but, in any case, no less than for 24 hours."
Hyperlinking to a reply is acceptable. "It may be considered sufficient to publish (the reply) or make available a link to it" from the spot of the original mention.
"So long as the contested information is available online, the reply should be attached to it, for example through a clearly visible link."
Long replies are fine. "There should be flexibility regarding the length of the reply, since there are (fewer) capacity limits for content than (there are) in off-line media."
While the Council of Europe is very influential and its proposals have a tendency to become law, that outcome is not guaranteed.
It's pretty zany to imagine that just about every form of online publishing, from full-time news organizations to occasional bloggers to moderated chat rooms, would be covered. But it's no accident. A January 2003 draft envisioned regulating only "professional on-line media." Two months later, a March 2003 draft dropped the word "professional" and intentionally covered all "online media" of any type.
Pall
They can write their reply on their check they send me to pay for my monthly web-hosting costs.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
So if the whole web works like slashdot we're covered? People can comment on any article if it refers to them or not.
Omnis amans amens
2. If the answer to 1 is "they won't", does this mean that any EU site will be a juicy target for trolls impersonating the subject of criticism? Sure sounds like an invitation for some nasty abuses to me!
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
A SCO rep could just reply on the journal entry, but how does the authentication work? Could I require him to PGP-sign his message? Or would it be irrelevant because Slashdot is not based in Europe?
Michel
Fedora Project Contribut
.. Now everytime someone says "Jon Katz sucks" he'll feel obligated to reply.
Trolling is a art,
How exactly does this impede freedom of speech? It's nothing more than is required for other editorialised publications, eg newspapers, and Europe has a far freer press than any other continent.
Internet communications forces itself on you.
This is a truly idiotic endeavor. While it may be one thing to require professional media outlets to provide such a forum (which they generally do out of good journalistic practice), it is another thing entirely to require it of any and all online content. While this is a long way from becoming law, it's distressing that such a proposal has made it this far...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
Of course this could be a good thing or a very bad thing.
At least the law doesnt say you have to reply to your critics.
At least you only have to hyperlink to them.
Of course, what could happen is that we might see a floweing of civil discussion or we might end up back in the stone age if slashdot flamage starts ending up in mom and pop's daily newspaper reading and everyone launches nukes for retaliation
Sigs are dangerous coy things
For weblogs, that is simple. Use a system that allows user comments.
You can still say what you want, you just have to allow the entity you are talking about a chance to reply. This has been 'good practice' in any real journalism for a while. You often see in news stories companyxxx was contacted but refused to reply or gave no comment or something.
No freedom of speach issues here.
As x approaches total apathy I couldn't care less.
I mean if you are sincere then you should allow them the ability of the rebuttal. I hate one sided arguments anyway. What a waste.
What I've never understood about laws like this is the location of the person vs. the location of the server.
Let's say I'm in Europe and my server is in the USA (pretty common I would guess). Whose laws am I subject to? And let's say I'm subject to European laws. They may be able to arrest me, but I would assume they have no legal right to force the ISP to remove my content.
Have there been any precedents around this sort of thing? And what country combination were those precedents?
Kazaa seems to be depending on this model - clients in the USA (and everywhere else, but USA is where the legal action is around Kazaa), staff in Australia, company & servers in Vanuatu. Maybe they are taking advantage of the confusion?
Read reviews of shopping cart software
Though this might be taking it a bit too far though. I don't like the authentication requirement. Surely it's up to the other person to prove he is who he claims to be before I should post his reply?
Given reasonable limits, of course. I should not be allowed to interrogate him and use regression hypnosis, etc. to make sure he's not a mole :)
Michel
Fedora Project Contribut
According to the draft:
"Aware at the same time that it may not be necessary to extend the right of reply to non-professional on-line media whose influence on public opinion is limited; "
I don't think that many weblog scould be considered professional or influencing of public opinion.
That it's a good thing actually? I mean think about it: I have this website, and any guy just comes and tells sooooo bad things on me; it is a chance to have an official answer and to force him to publish it, so everyone knows what I reply to him. It would lead to more discussion than now, because now what I answer will probabyl nit be known by a lot of people.
And then he said: "I'll tell you the meaning of life. It is" and then realized 120 chars are definitely not enough...
So, if you have an open blog; ppl can register and answer whatever they want.
"The reply should be made publicly available in a prominent place for a period of time (that) is at least equal to the period of time during which the contested information was publicly available, but, in any case, no less than for 24 hours." "
--Prominent... Like close to the offending comment, offering it the same exposure ?
â Hyperlinking to a reply is acceptable. "It may be considered sufficient to publish (the reply) or make available a link to it" from the spot of the original mention.
--ditto
â "So long as the contested information is available online, the reply should be attached to it, for example through a clearly visible link."
--ditto
â Long replies are fine. "There should be flexibility regarding the length of the reply, since there are (fewer) capacity limits for content than (there are) in off-line media."
-ditto
So, all I will do is add a small line at the bottom of my Blog that says "Whatever you say, someone else can answer if they feel compelled to!"...
As in, a blog ?
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
Well this is just a proposal. How many idiotic proposed bills get canned in the U.S every year? Hell, how many idiotic bills get shot down in the senate every year?
If you're European (Check) and you think this sounds bad (Check) read the propsoal (Will do) and write to your MEP (You'll probably have to find out who they are first of course) and object. Explain why.
Hopefully we can stop it becoming an actual idiotic law.
I can still say anything I want. I can say slashdot sucks on my blog. All I have to do is give the slashdot editors a chance to put up a message on my blog that says "no we don't". I can still say anything I want. And since linking to a response is acceptable, I could even tell them, "Fine, I'll put a link up to your response."
If you look at some of the web pages that make fun of a corporation and got in trouble, they put up the response and then make fun of it, so not much will actually change.
If anything, this might make free speech *more* available, since anyone who says "wal-mart sucks" has a non-onerous way of placating wal-mart without having to take down the text that offended wal-mart.
Recently, we saw Penny-Arcade forced to take down a Strawberry Shortcake parody. What if instead, all they had to do was put American Greetings' response to the parody. And then since they've complied with the law, they wouldn't have had to take the strip down. And what if they could use that compliance as an additional defense?
This would make like a reply from MS on every single /. story a requirement.
But I bet no matter what they say MS's replies will be spelled correctly.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Maybe, just maybe - Europe's onto a good thing, actually.
Or the rule is intended simply to make life difficult enough to restore the operational ceiling of free speech to those with the means to publish information in conventional forms. Sort of like requiring a test before voting. On paper a good idea, but in practice a means of controlling participation.
"Europe has a far freer press than any other continent."
A gross over-generalisation, and probably not true - the USA has a freer press and more freedom of information, dunno about Canada - Mexico I am less confident about.
(BTW, I'm a European)
"This will likely have a chilling effect on Internet communication (at least in Europe)."" I reject this... Wheres your proof? ;)
Newspapers are under no obligation to print letters to the editor. Generally they will print a retraction if the original article was in error, but they don't have to, and it is then upto the individuals concerned to sue the newspaper in question.
Why should an electronic forum be forced to post a response? Why can't the responder post it on their own website/mailing list/forum as generally happens now?
So... I assume that Microsoft will be hiring quite soon to account for the increased work-load?
Steve
Why should you, or I, or anyone else have the "right" to post slanderous or just plain false comments about companies/people without their ability to respond?
Frankly, if someone starts posting bad things about me or my company somewhere, I really would like to be able to respond to those comments.
My only concern about this is the potential for abuse:
Let's say that I post a "Company X sucks" rant on my web site... Company X sends a response, that according to this law would be required to be posted on my site. Company X's response is in the form of an extremely large file. Company X then has an employee post an anonymous article to Slashdot ( First use of annoying new low in EU! Take a look _here_[annoyingly large file, hosted on my server]). My hosting company kindly then sends me a bill for the bandwidth useage, and I quietly go bankrupt...
Sticks and Stones may break my bones, but copyright will always protect me.
Buncha commie pinko leftie bastards deserve it. Oh, wait. The UK's still part of Europe, isn't it? This is easily the most oppressive legislation ever, and is an insult to all those in the free world!
Lets see here. In a court of personal opinion eurpeons are now going to be required to give those critized a chance to respond?
Well on a mailing list this isnt a big deal. critsism and response happen all the time. But i the case of blogs? That makes no sense. A blog is simply a journal or diary. The only diffrence is its avilable to the world. Do you want to response to critisim in your journal?
In America we are imprisoned by our fear of them.
This law makes no since because unlike print where as few people have the methods to publish, on the web ANYONE can write something and throw it online for a miminal, or no cost. If you want to reply to something in particular , start a blog, i mean what else are they other than a commentary on a specfic authors take on life...
The beauty of the web is that everyone has a voice, and there is no need to force others to publish stuff that is not their own.
I live in England (well I don't but bear with me here)... and I write something bad about tony blair on my website.
I then have to allow an avenue for tony to be able to "Comment" or "Give his side" on MY WEBSITE???
What the hell? Who comes up with this shit. If someone writes nasty things about you on their blog you write nasty things about them on your blog ... or is this just an American concept?
So what if I say something bad about someone in public, must I then allow them to speakerphone in and explain it from their perspective to my friends?
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
You folks do understand that this will apply to any online version of a newspaper? Might actually be a good thing, since right now newspapers, even online ones don't do a good job with retraction.
;-)
I don't believe this law will affect blogs that are run like forums (i.e. Slashdot), since there is plenty of opportunity for someone to post a rebuttal. (Might be tough to find once it was moderated into the ground, though...
This ruling might become unwieldy when someone decides to provide a multi-terabyte response. Or one full of pop-up ads.
Now, I can open a slash forum in which I'll criticize anybody.
They'll reply publicly, I'll reply publicly...
At the end people will come to see how well they bite and I'll make money advertising.
OK, blagues a part, if it's only giving them the right to reply (according to the article, a URL is enough), then I don't mind, this will add tomye-community's animation.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Who decides what qualifies as "criticism?"
Are opinions included? Am I allowed to say "I don't like you" or do I have to post your rebuttal?
Are business covered? Do they have to post replies from their competitors? If a company claims that their product works, is that tacit criticism of someone who says that it does not? Does that person get to post their complaint on the offending companies website?
What if the criticism is oblique? "Other products aren't as fast as the Super Widget 2003" Who gets to reply?
This is capitalistic gentrification. This is some organization planting a flag and claiming the internet as principally a business stomping ground.
My
Limekiller
And it once again sees removed a large chunk of friviolous, US inspired, type of lawsuits we can just do without, from the general 'speak your mind on the net' equasion. Not to mention the fact that it equals the playing field between the big guys and the small guys. So good for the small guys; and tough, but fair to the big guys.
As to verifying the authentity; that it is really up to the publisher if he or she wants to limit the amounth of counter argument it wants to publish.
Dw
you just have to allow the entity you are talking about a chance to reply
This sounds a lot like the old "Fairness Doctrine" that was applied to US radio broadcasts prior to 1988. That rule said that if you broadcasted X hours of programming with a certain point of view, you also had to broadcast X hours of programming with an opposing point of view. The main problem with this was that in many situations, one of the sets of programs was a ratings loser and hence a major money loser, so the radio stations would not broadcast either. Some people have even argued that this practice stiffled peoples' expression of controversial opinions on the radio.
In case of fire, do not use elevator. Use water!
At least not in the US. Such "right of reply" laws were ruled categorically unconstitutionl in the US a long tome ago. _Miami Herald Pub. Co. v. Tornillo_, 418 U.S. 241 (1974). link
For example you will be in hellish hot water as a paper when you just print accusations without even giving the accused so much as a chance to answer to those allegations.
Also, if somebody feels unfairly treated he has a right to a counter statement (Gegendarstellung in German). That's not an elaborate article, but the right to set the facts straight from his/her position. The paper doesn't have to agree with it an can explicitely mention that, but they must print it with few exceptions.
So why the fsck should this be different on the net then in the printed press? Should Mr. Drudge have the right to smear around his rumours, without the right of a potentially badly harmed person to even respond to it? I think not.
By the way: This right to a counter statement is based on Swiss press laws. think Germany is quite comparable.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
Well, if what we're discussing actually becomes law, not in Europe anymore!
If I understand your intent, you probably meant "Nazis" and "Communists" rather than "Germans" and "Russians"?
I don't entirely see what the fuss is all about. It doesn't mean you can't say what you like about someone, just that if they find out about it, you have to post their reply. A bit like Slash. It will not stop anonymous@cowards, slander, libel or anything like that (you only have to see the UK tabloids to see that)
Of course they'll need more IT professionals to administer it...
Given her acting in the last two star wars films, I'm not too sure we'd be able to tell whether she was petrified or not.
Basically, it states that you are always entitled to a response at no cost in the publication that has criticized you, to give the readers both sides of the story.
If some paper/magazine writes a critical article on your person or organization, this gives you the right to post your rebuttal to the same audience that read the initial article - which seems OK for me.
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
[Zappa]
I think you miss it completely. This isn't about censorship AT ALL! It's about letting people have an somewhat official answer to someone who mistreated them. And about USA=land of the free blah blah blah, I don't agree with you neiter. How could a country ruled by bigottery morrons where the Church is INSIDE the political government give more freedom to its citizen? Remember what our loving christian friends did to those who didn't think like them some centuries ago?? USA is a kind of Matrix, with politicla power on the surface saying 'Yay dude, here it's freedom liberty land of the free and so on. We rock.', whilst actually, it's all about corrupted bigottry.
And then he said: "I'll tell you the meaning of life. It is" and then realized 120 chars are definitely not enough...
Think of a farmer applying bug killers to his crops. "Well gee, an ounce is about... well, about a 'glug', and if one glug is good for killing 'em, two or three must do the job right damn well!"
In the original proposal, the restriction to "professional" for this law would have opened up commentary and communication quite well. If you look at the BBC's news site the level of commentary and discussion on the articles is actually very good.
But opening up this requirement to EVERY site that puts an opinion online is pretty moronic, since the person who has money behind their opinion can have the PR staff zipping through hostile weblogs for an hour every afternoon cut-n-pasting the opposition into oblivion, while the smaller voices will have enough trouble just preserving the intended tone of their own sites.
Add this to the free speech case where Nike is suing for the right to lie in its marketing efforts, and the FUD wars coming up in Europe could make the MS vs. Linux diatribes look like sweet kisses from your first love.
Searching for Truth, Justice, and the Guy Who Boosted My Wallet a Few Weeks Back....
What if someone complains about people who post offensive postings and gets a reply from goatsx? Do they have to post his reply? Maybe goatsx has a use after all, like irritating these lawmakers.
I used to wonder what was so holy about a silent night, now I have a child.
This will likely have a chilling effect on Internet communication (at least in Europe)."
The right of reply is not a chill on free speech. It is meant to be there as a counterbalance to smear campaigns financed by vested political/economic interests. This is often needed in practice. Do you know that the Clintons were exonerated of Whitewater scandal by all prosecutors including their arch-rival Kenneth Starr?
You didn't know that? Do you ever wonder why?
I wouldn't worry about this too much.
The Council of Europe is all about cultural and social rights, and it's pretty good at it.
The Council of Europe passes guidelines for the states and facilitates co-operation between different group.
What the Council of Europe doesn't do is legislate. Yes, I agree that in this case the well-meaning beaurocrats at the CoE have got it completely wrong, but this does not mean that it will become law in any country or region.
That's what the EU is for, and whilst the Council of Ministers (consisting of the Heads of State or Government) can be pretty authoritarian at times (still insisting they meet in secret!), the European Parliament is normally pretty good at defending people's rights, rather than attacking them, as most member states governments are so keen on doing (think Echelon).
Council of Europe is NOT a "quasi-governmental" entity. Indeed, it is an intergovernmental one and is the closest thing there is to a central, federal, European government. Calling it "quasi-governmental" is a gross inaccuracy. More info here
Mother is the best bet and don't let Satan draw you too fast.
I personally think that this is a good time, all the law does is allow equal time. Scrolling through the comments I have seen a lot of people very negative about this and I don't understand why. This doesn't violate free speech ( and being an american I don't really know what Europes free speech laws are anyway) it just makes it so if someone decides on their website to attack someone else that they have a fair chance for rebuttle. There seems to be no better way to increase the flow of good infomration. As I write this though I've come to think of a few interesting situations. What about political campaigns? Do they have to allow their opponenet the chance to respond to their attacks? What about major companies who make advertising claims against other companies? Etc. I have no problem with either of these, I just think it'll be interesitng, and make for an intersting web site. " Our product is 10 times better then Ultrasoft" and now a message from ultrasoft "What they just said is not true."
Be better in bed. Wikiafterdark!
Why do this sound like a limitation to me?????
Also what would you say about the fact that you should provide the write of an answer *only* to those you're critisizing?
Well, hell, if that's not a freedom of speech issue.
If some illiterate jerk running a 'blog, should follow this law, every time when she/he says "Damn, this burgers, really sucked that night" or anything, how often he/she will dare to "issue" a critic???
I see tons of problems with this.
The main one goes that every person that doesn't feel ready to start a disput with someone "bigger", will avoid saying loudly his/hers opinion because of the risk to be smashed by some fency PR team on his OWN site...
1. No sig. 2. ???? 3. Profit!!!
If i write my opinion of the color of your house on your house in spray paint, it dosent affect you morgage either, but youre not gonna be happy with it
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
Talk about being biased. Such absurd and ignorant generalizations from one, admittedly seemingly ill-conceived, law proposal.
One might as well look at the American health care and say, for better or for worse, US lacks all respect for well-being of its citizens.
Replying to myself... *blush*: The stuff I wrote is valid for Germany where I am living, other EU countries may have different laws
How does this limit free speech? You can still say what you want, and if someone says something about you that is untrue, you have the right to post a clarification. Both the original text and the reaction are available for everyone to see, so there is no censoring.
This sig under construction. Please check back later.
What if a news commentary anchor is critical of, say, our president (I know this is far-fetched, but stay with me here). They aren't obligated to give him a 30-second commercial spot in retaliation.
Newspapers are not required (though often do) publish retalitory letters to editorials.
That doesn't mean you won't at times have to answer for your comments - that's why we have legal mechanisms for handling slander, etc. But forcing personal blogs and web sites to post retalitory comments is, well, dumb.
Now, having said that, do we have to allow these folks a response on slashdot? Just curious.
My sig sucks.
in france the radio stations have to play a certain amount of usic in french. and in germany if you move you have to register with the local police station. europe is much more paternalistic ( fascist).
So, lets see, you have the Holocaust Deniers who can force News sites to link to them every time they are mentioned in a news post, an accused rapist demanding linkage under court order to his victim's web site, Labor Party forced to link to Conservative Party, fascists/communists court-ordered posting every time they get criticized...
Something fundamentally wrong about that. What ever happened to the Marketplace of Ideas? Thomas Jefferson championed it in the USA, but the original idea came from European philosophers (Locke, etc).
Its my web space, I pay for it, why should I be forced to give credence and publicity to someone I am opposed to, on MY dime? They can use their own site and post there.
To parphrase an old hyper-mach-military saying (Kill them all and let God sort them out):
Post them all, and let Google sort them out.
Vox populi, and all that jazz...
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo! http://goo.gl/J9bkO
This would mean that you would be required to post the responses as well as authenticate their origin and make the responses available for some period of time.
So the answer is they're required to verify it. My question is, who's going to get the burden of authentication? Can you get away with just not posting responses that don't include some form of authentication, or do you have to go talk with everyone who submits a response letter to find out if they're aurthentic or not? That could be a potential pain.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
how do they plan to enforce it?
there is already case law that I do not have to follow EU concil rulings if my bsuienss is not direct with UE coutnries..casse with both EBay, Yahoo, Google and et cper German's no nazi stuff laws..
Don't Tread on OpenSource
>No freedom of speach issues here.
I am happy to say the Supreme Court feels otherwise, and thankfully their opinion is the one that counts. "[A]ny such a compulsion to publish that which reason tells them should not be published is unconstitutional." MIAMI HERALD PUBLISHING CO. v. TORNILLO, 418 U.S. 241 (1974).
I think your conception of free speach needs revisiting.
Your freedom to say anything you want stops as soon as it refrains the ability of someone else to defend himself.
Don't confuse the right of free speach with the right of defamation!
If you're paying the hosting bill and running the site, then the site is your private property. Do you really want the government to tell you that you must let others exercise their rights to free speech on your property at the expense of your time, your work (to post the link, etc.), and your money (to pay for bandwidth, etc.)?
Forced speech is illegal in the US. Also, good practice in journalism isn't law - I think it's clear by now that good journalism isn't law in the US as the jails would be currently full. There has never been any obligation to say anything in the US - outside of heavily regulated media such as TV and radio, where the use of the spectrum is gained at a tradeoff. Courts here have already ruled that the internet doesn't come under such heavy consideration.
So yes, anytime someone tells you what you have to say, there's a freedom of speech issue involved. What Europe is trying to do would be illegal in the US. The US has taken a lot of heat from the international community for what we've done, but here's a case where Europeans are the ones having their rights stolen by their governments.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Yeah, I think about this when smoking a dooby in parallel with quaffing a beer in public.
I will give it even more thought when I do some skinny dipping in the lake.
But then again: Maybe not...
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
There is no need for a right of reply on the internet. When anyone can get a site and post their own response to anything that is said about them on the net, why do they need to use my site?
(Don't feed trolls, etc, but the blurb talks about "chilling" too, so...)
Please explain how making sure that you get a chance to respond to any unfair, incomplete or in your eyes otherwise faulty publication, in a way that guarantees the response will be read by the public originally subject to the wrong-saying, stiffles free speech ?
As others have said, this also is a fairly good thing if you are the poster, not the subject : if anyone disagrees with what I say, the fact that I (am forced to) offer them a forum to respond kindof takes the wind out of their sails to hammer me with baseless libel threats.
Does this mean we will get M$ commenting on every /. post concerning them?
Maybe the Council of Europe would be obligated to post criticism of their decisions on their own website?
- jiggity
LOL, this is sadly my picture of a "patriotic" american. :-(
Giving someone the right to reply to something is endorsing free speech, in my opinion. It doesnt forbid anyone to say anything.
The very reason that the original opinion was posted may be because the speaker considers the target's opinion to be damaging or harmful. Allowing such a law opens the door for the curtailing of many freedoms, including the freedom of religion.
Whether you agree or not, a religeous organization has the right to speak out against activities that it views as bad from their own pulpits without the government forcing access to that same pulpit to the opposition. For instance, imagine the outcome if the government forced a mosque to allow a Jew to respond to Islamic accusations made in that mosque.
A newspaper, radio show, web log, or other online site should have the equivalent respect. The site belongs to the owner. They should be able to post what they want, without intervention, as long as it does not spread intentional lies about someone or state secrets that pose a national threat. These types of things are handled via damages through the courts, not via censorship legislation.
As long as the public is free to access the opinion of the oposing side, there should be no such law.
'nuff said...
--==-- I've found Karma to be a relative thing... Ya know, the kind you invite to Christmas...
suppose, as a good /.er, I post a story in which I tell how much SCO sucks. :)
They force me to publish a reply : "no we don't, but linux sucks !"
Do I also have to publish Linux people's answers to my home page or has it to be published on SCO's site ?
I'd be happy if this could lead to many famous people barking at each other from my blog
Trolling using another account since 2005.
What's up with this at the tail end of an otherwise relatively well-written essay?
Europe lacks a First Amendment and the respect for limited government, private property and free enterprise that America still enjoys.
Item 1: Of course they don't have the First Amendment. They don't have the Declaration of Independance or the Proclamation of Emancipation, either; the First Amendment is part of the American constitution. This intentionally emotion-provoking phrase intends to say "they don't have freedom of speech", which may be true in limited ways (I understand, for example, that Nazi references are regulated in Germany), but I've never heard of extreme censorship in Europe. Am I wrong? Is Europe secretly a band of neo-nazi fascist authoritarians? My bad...
Item 2: No respect for private property. Really? This reads like a third-grader's "your momma's so fat" joke; it seems like it's just there to try to make Europe seem bad, without any justifying context. Again, am I wrong? Did Europe turn Commie when I wasn't looking? I hate it when they do that...
Item 3: Free enterprise is disrespected by Europe too? Okay, I don't actually know anything about Europe on this one. If we let Microsoft to continue to operate a monopoly, let the RIAA run the music industry as an oligarchy, and let the oil industry run the government (all of which practices are extremely discouraging to "free enterprise" in that competition is made more difficult), we don't get to bitch about Europe.
Item 4: "... that America still enjoys". With the implication that in pursuit of respect for Free Speech, Respect For Small Government, and Respect For Free Enterprise, America is the shining star that all other nations should look to for inspiration. Get real; the states aren't any better at any of this than their peers in democracy. College kids don't get their life-savings yanked for producing search engines in free-speech respecting nations. America rocks; it's my favorite country by far. But don't go trying to make it sound like it's got all the problems licked, and if the rest of the world would just look at what we're doing over here...
Stop trying to cram pro-American sentimentalities down our throat. There were two pages of informative and interesting writing before that line, why'd you have to ruin it by trying to make America the moral of the story?
Sheesh...
Ok, the problem I see with this is that it can potentially be abused by an organization. Take this example:
1. Make a cheap/crappy "widget" and give it away free to be reviewed by hundreds or thousands of popular websites. Make it so bad they can't help but review it.
2. Require a hyperlink to your website by those websites because of your right-to-reply. Your reply is simply an advertisement for the product.
3. PageRank on Google climbs so you are the #1 result when searching for "widget".
4. ??? (sit back and watch the orders roll in)
5. Profit
Full-Featured GPL Web Hosting Control Panel
It's nothing more than is required for other editorialised publications
Editorialized publications are not required to publish responses, at least not in the USA, though most do some of that via letters to the editor and the like. Many only publish excerpts of such responses. In the USA, requiring that the press publish anything is constitutionally difficult.
But whereas editorialized publications typically have a staff to manage such things, my blog only has me. I don't have time to read all of my hate mail, and I lack the inclination to post it for the world to see. If I blog about spammers in general, I certainly wouldn't appreciate having to post every piece of spam I recieve afterward.
More to the point, since I don't advertise, I have to pay for the bandwidth out of pocket.
Why should I have to pay to post your ill considered opinions in addition to my own?
What this law does is raise the financial threshold (both in terms of time and money required, where time = money) a person must reach to be able to freely put their thoughts, experiences, etc., on the internet.
This would mean that you would be required to post the responses as well as authenticate their origin
So i would have to verify who a response actually comes from? And how, pray tell?
1. Criticise someone ("Jaque Chirac sucks!"
2. receive numerous responses rebutting ("No, I don't", "No he doesn't")
3. Now I have to weed through all of these, and figure out which one came from the actual person/entity criticised in #1.
4. Provide link to same
5. Wash, rinse, repeat
6. Declare bankruptcy, because I spent all of my time complying with this stupid law and lost my job.
" If anything, this just goes to show that Europe does not endorse the right of free speech."
Don't forget that, ultimately, this is the europeans which choose that their freedom has to be limited. Even Switzerland, with its direct democray, has undisputed* speech restriction law.
(* meaning undisputed by a vast majority of the people)
There's a (wide, IMHO) gap from censoring communications and having laws with allow the justice to sanction people promoting race discrimination.
#include "coucou.h"
Please, RTFA and try to understand what the Council of Europe's proposition really is without getting trapped by Declan McCullagh pure trolling!
This is the point:
IF you criticize someone on your website AND IF this someone wants to reply to your criticism THEN you must give space to his reply.
This not only makes pure sense, but it's the obvious base for whatever notion of "freedom of speech".
If whichever John Smith in your blog insulted you and you want to reply, well this proposition says John must give space to your reply. God, what a european non-sense, uh?
If they are going to do this I want the right of response to all advertisement claims. Lets see how quick the whole thing gets dropped with this amendment.
We may fear that it will only mean that every single news story will have a link to a boring press release from the politician/company/government entity in question. However, it may effect a deeper change in online news media towards something more oriented towards dialogue than towards the pure distribution that is common now.
This could be interesting to watch - another little step in this collective experiement that is the internet.
Of course, all this favours again the big entities who have the resources to Kibose the world and reply to everything - even though Google should help the rest of us should we want to do the same thing.
/Lars
Unfortunately for you, this is not the first post! You are a pathetic FAILURE!
YOU FAIL IT!
In compliance with the EU Right of Reply Directive, you are granted the right to offer a counter-version or reply. Please click on the "Reply to This" hyperlink. Your counter-version or reply will be made available thru a clearly visible hyperlink which will be attached to this post.
"For weblogs, that is simple. Use a system that allows user comments."
What if I edit the text file containing my weblog information by hand? What if I manually type all of the <hr>, <i>, and <blockquote> tags by hand, to get the exact formatting that I want? Can I require that the replier submit their reply in a format that matches my existing site? Can I even stop them from sending me a MS-Word format doc, which I cannot open?
Weblogs are so bloody simple that it can all be done by hand, without any backend scripting, if one is patient enough to develop something initially and stick to it. I've been using my weblog format for more than two years, and it works quite well for my purposes. I'm sure that others don't like the lack of linkable comments until I recently added it, and the lack of interactive search capability, but it's my weblog, and if I want it to be based in stone-age HTML so it loads fast, I will.
So, if anyone wants to send a rebuttal to me, they can type it with my HTML formatting style.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
First up, I don't agree with this proposal at all, but it seems apparent that there are some exaggerations here.
First, this proposal seems to be aimed at protecting the individual from slander by business, not vice-versa.
Second, I don't see how this relates to blogs.. the draft specifically says "professional on-line media":
The right of reply, and in particular the principles of Resolution (74) 26, should apply not only to the press, radio and television, but also to professional on-line media.
and in the "definitions":
the term "professional on-line media" means any natural or legal person or other entity whose main professional activity is to engage in the collection, dissemination and/or editing of information to the public on a regular basis via the Internet
We've had a right of reply in the printed press for years, and it definitely did not chill down the work of the press. In how far would the so-called "freedom of speech" be affected? D'oh.
open (SIG, "</dev/zero"); $sig = <SIG>; close SIG;
Having read the article and digested the meaning, I have to say I like the idea.
;)
Many people here are taking the stance that the article writer has: Bad Idea(tm). Most seem concerned that this will somehow hamper free speech.
I call bullshit. This will *foster* free speech. Let's be honest; how many of us have gone to blogs or forums where the prevalent opinion is different from our own and been shouted down, had our posts edited or deleted? Apparently not many of you. Well, I have. Almost always it's "It's my site, you'll play by my rules. If I don't like what you have to say, tough shit, you're deleted." Forcing the issue legally allows discussion to take place. Without a right to reply, you merely have one person/group spewing whatever they wish without a dissenting voice.
To deny a right to reply is what will really hamper free speech.
Don't believe me? Well then, don't reply; you don't have the right.
"Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised."
-Marilyn Manson
The Slashdot headline is misleading, this is far from set in stone. The Council of Europ has only influence, it has no legislative authoriity. There already is Right-of-Reply for most print publicaitons in Europe, but some countries, such as Great Britian, have not enacted those laws.
This is just a suggestion of an influential body. The proposal may be accepted in part or in whole by all, some or none of the European member countries.
Personally, I hope it dies a painful death, and maybe the Europeans can eliminate right of reply all around. Print and the internet aren't TV-- there's no scarcity involved. This just sounds like a bureacratic (sp!) nightmare, a feel-good proposal that has the government meddle where there is no need.
Thank goodness for the 1st amendment, which keeps silly laws like this (we have other kinds of silly laws) out of the USA.
quote is on NRO Sorry for the second-hand refrence. It is from The Economist and I do not have a subscription
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
This sounds like a way to kick anyone with an opinion who lacks sufficient technical knowledge from expressing themselves.
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
We all remember when France sued Yahoo! to get them to stop allowing material that was not "acceptible" to the French, even though the Yahoo! servers are here in America; so with that in mind could this law be used to force the "right of reply" on blog-servers here in the good ol' USA?
... if I posted a link to a response located in /dev/null ? Does that conform with the letter of the law?
In C++, friends can touch each others private parts.
Tooooooo right.
And the most freaking part of it, is that the % of francophone content they should play is pretty high. The result:
As there's obviously not enough quality productions to fill the required interval, the listener ends up stuck with 95% repeating music scheme for as long as a complete year.
PS: I'm European, but it's saaaaad...
1. No sig. 2. ???? 3. Profit!!!
I'm not from Europe, but from the article there already is a right of reply law.
These laws did exist in the US, but don't anymore.
I think this is a generally a good thing, and quite polite.
The problem is it may be open to abuses, which could be solved simply by linking to the persons web site with the post about them, if they care enough to respond they can do it there.
BTW, if you make sure your claims of facts are valid in the first place, you won't run into trouble.
The right to freedom of expression certainly seems to be going down the toilet these days... This is a very dangerous trend!
Say you run a 'family-oriented', church based blog or website. No rude language, etc (Think of the children!)
In the process, you 'criticise' online porn, and name one of the most blatant purveyors specifically. He then drafts up a rebuttal, and posts it on his website, informing you of the URL.
Is the church website then required to provide a link to his porn website under this (proposed) law?
Here's your chance. Set up a rebuttals website.
Say http://www.rebuttals.eu
Now, if I say something about the Acme Widget company that they don't like, I can put their rebuttal on http://www.rebuttals.eu with a link to it from my site. It's win-win-win. Acme gets their rebuttal, I save on bandwidth, and www.rebuttals.eu can surround the rebuttal with advertising for Acme or even any other Widget company.
Now the big question is, how do I patent this business model?
This is yet another example of our illustrious political bodies dreaming up rules and regulations from behind their desk.
Even if such a rule would become law, there is *no way* they can enforce it. I mean, if company funded orgs like the BSA can't stop copying of software, then how on earth will a publicly funded (== always short on cash) organisation do this Europe-wide? It's a paper tiger.
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
Where did you hear that one? Ever read the Enquirer?
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
I am happy to say the Supreme Court feels otherwise, and thankfully their opinion is the one that counts.
This proposed legislation would be entirely outside their jurisdiction so their opinion counts for no more than anyone else's.
Well said. Most of the EU member states have enshrined the European Convention on Human Rights into law. Article 10 of this convention sets out the right to free expression (although qualified in section 2 to include responsibilities).
Your well thought out expression gives me some confort that not all Americans subscribe to the foolishly jingoistic notion that the American construction of liberty is the only valid one.
As a European, I rarely feel myself groaning under the oppressive weight of our democracies, nor do I feel the oxygen of liberty suddenly fill my lungs during my many visits to the USA. It's perfectly possible (indeed admirable) to take pride in your country and culture without sneering at the achievements of others, whose efforts and results may reflect a history of which one is not aware.
--Ng
This would mean that you would be required to post the responses as well as authenticate their origin and make the responses available for some period of time. This will likely have a chilling effect on Internet communication (at least in Europe).
Bit strange... any definitions as to how specific you would have to be before this took effect? e.g. if I called 'programmers of operating systems' - now, note how vague the term is - if I called them something mean like 'wankers', am I then expected to post responses from - say - Microsoft, even though I wasn't referring directly to them?
The analogy is shocking, I know, but I hope it conveys my point.
Which is probably wrong.
Anyway ...
What's the problem?
Giving pepole the right to reply to published opinion strikes me as prefectly fair. And this bit:
This would mean that you would be required to post the responses as well as authenticate their origin and make the responses available for some period of time
Looks like it'll provide an interesting get-out to stop flippant responses. If you need to authenticate, insist on PGP signed email.... But demand the PGP public-key is sent via registered snail-mail on a CD. Better yet, insist on an SAE too to allow some form of return address validation.
With a bit of effort anyone could come-up with a way to make validation really irksome, and therefore not something to be undertaken litely.
Do you mind, your karma has just run over my dogma.
Even though I find the proposal a bit odd, I can't really see it as something that limits free speach. You can still say anything you like.
I'm not sure how this would help the large company much, they usually have their own media machine where they can publish anything they want. It does however give the small person or company a chance to refute slander published by larger companies.
Really, wouldn't it be nice to have Microsoft publish answers to some of their silly statements about Linux companies on Microsoft's own site?
If anything, this is pro-free-discussion.
What about the stipulation that the response must be made available for a period of time at least equal to the duration of the original criticism and at least 24 hours? If you have a blog and one day decide you just don't want to maintain it any more (or can't afford the fees associated with hosting, or whatever) and decide to take it down, should you then be required to keep the site running an additional period of time just to be sure the response is available for the same length of time as your original comment or longer?
1) Write a 10,000,000 gigabyte reply.
2) Enforce your right to reply.
This is a freedom of press issue. A law that requires a newspaper, web site, or radio program to provide a forum for anyone whom they criticize infringes on their rights to publish a newspaper, web site, or radio program as they see fit. The freedom of press guarantees that I can report on anything I want, publish it in any manner I see fit, and completely ignore anyone else's point of view. They , of course, are free to do the same.
Stuart Eichert
Vee haff ordered zat zee people shall be SHUT UP. If zay don't like it, f*ck them.
Sieg Heil!
Im starting to get older and I've started feeling like my country (USA) was falling behind the rest of the world when it comes to policies on things like intellectual property, litigation, copyrights, patents, and legislation. But, now I reallize that the USA is again leading. Thank you EU for showing me that American legislation is just as stupid as the rest of the world.
From: ballmerd00d@hotmail.com
To: webmaster@cnn.com
Subject: Re: Your article on Microsoft vs. Linux
M$ oWnZ LiNuX!!! Post these comments or I hAx0r j00 and tell the European Council!
Steve-o Ballmer
L33t d00d
I suspect the motive behind this legislation is to allow spammers to be prosecuted. Europeans (encouraged by the press) are currently outraged at spammers sending hardcore porn to their children. Most of these spam e-mails do not have a valid return e-mail address. If its illegal to send out mail without a valid reply-to address, it would help combat spam (at least spam originating in Europe.) That has to be a good thing.
Actually, with the freedom of expression comes the obligation not to publish names of people without their consent.
*I* think this is a brilliant plan, and it is shocking that nothing has been done until now. The proposal prevents publication of false rumors that may harm individuals - something that is unthinkable in any other type of publication medium (except the Weekly World News).
fart/faart/(coarse) (v.intr.): emit intestinal gas from the anus. (n.): emission of intestinal gas from the anus.
Bill Gates can already sign on to /. and say whatever he wants. Why make a law?
"The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it." -- Ayn Rand
I shouldn't have to incur the financial penalty of having to host the "other side's" argument. Let them get _their own_ site and publish _their own_ material. That sounds a little more fair to me. With the barrier to entry as low as it is on the internet, there's no reason why others should be allowed to legally vandalize my site with their dissenting opinions.
First the mandatory collection of VAT and now this. I guess it is time to set up an US to setup an EU IP ban on our web servers.
Seems ok until you consider the effect on an individual's website. The true power of the web is that anyone can publish thier thoughts. Imagine you critize a company that you had a bad experience with on your personal website. Imagine them shutting you down because you didn't allow them to counter. Or, you allow them to reply, but they then create a reply that voilates your bandwidth TOS. Either way you're off the net. Your single voice will be stifled.
I disagree with you, and I am telling you so. That is what this law would allow everyone to do. If it were face to face, or a phone call, our discussion would be private. But if you go on the Internet, and make it public, then I should (and will) have the right to reply in public, in the same way (so that it is intelligible). I don't see your point - do you want to say bad things about people, and for them to have no right to rebutt your comments? What is distressing about giving people freedom to give thier point of view?
I stole this
Unfortunately, the source for those God given rights, has been ignored. This will cause a slide away from stable "rights mandated by God" to sliding "rights allowed by the government or a fickle society."
My suggestion is this:
Make no mistake, maintaining or obtaining freedom is a constant fight and many, many, many have literaly laid down their lives to keep it. Don't forget the last two world wars. Any great society that has grown complacent in their vigilance for freedom has crumbled. Most have done so in a very short amount of time.
'nuff said...
--==-- I've found Karma to be a relative thing... Ya know, the kind you invite to Christmas...
Is this REALLY practical with the ability to forge a from field in email? God forbid I pretend to be bill@microsoft.com to all his critics causing them to validate hundreds of thousands of email, which aren't ACTUALLY from him.
Let's put this in perspective: What's to stop Microsoft(tm)(c)(r) from posting right here on /. (no points for answering "the moderation system") - but how often does /. get to post on the MS site?
#!/usr/bin/english
Europe is like the United States. The only main differences being: U.S. economy is dominate, U.S. military is dominate, U.S. uses 1 main language compared to Europes many, the U.S. has actually defeated England in a war within the last 500 years, the U.S. Constitution has remained relavent for 200+ years, U.S. citizens value freedom and will kick ass to maintain it, the U.S. is very ethnically diverse (the U.S. being the country of immigrants that it is), and, finally (and my personal favorite), the U.S. has lower taxes that most (if not all) of Europe.
I know that many Europeans (read German/Swiss) believe that they are intellectually superior to Americans, many (read French) believe they are more unique than Americans, many (read eastern Eurpoean basketball players) believe that they "got game" or have "skills", many (read all) believe that Americans are fat (true), and many (read Finnish) believe that Linux was invented in Finland (when in fact it was invented by Al Gore working closely with Larry Ellison). While this all may be true, you still can't say so if I critize you on my blog in the U.S.
Honk if you're horny.
I agree fully.
I know in america, while I don't remember the specefic laws on the subject, that radio / telivision have to give equal air time to a contervercial issue, and this law/reg was used in the 1960's and 1970's in order to justify putting on anti-smoking comercials.
It was a free speech issue after a fasion as no one wanted to be critical of their top advertisers, but it was more a equal access issue.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
Media is media. This won't have a "chilling effect" on Internet communications because any publically available Internet publication is not private communication, but a public medium. If a nation enforces right to reply in regard to media such as newspapers, radio and television, why should it not also enforce right to reply in other media?
Internet publications should not draw a pass simply because they use a different technology. Nor should weblogs, mailing lists, etc., expect an exemption because they are "personal" or often operated by only one person.
If you want what you say to be considered private communications, you wouldn't print it in a newspaper or broadcast it on radio or TV. Likewise, if you want what you write to be seen as private communications, don't put it on the Internet.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
I don't see why that, If I criticize someone on my website, that I should be responsible for their response. If I criticize Microsoft, and they feel the need to respond to it, I think they just might have a website of their own, where they can say whatever they want. Of course, I don't think Microsoft cares what I say, and I don't think I'll get a rebuttal on their front page. Similarly, I think that most of the responses will be form letters. It may not even address the specific criticism, it will probably just end up being a source of free advertising - just post your sales pitch everywhere someone talks about you.
They can post their own response to the Internet just as easily as anyone else. It isn't like the Net makes it hard...
This is the kind of thing about the European 'way' that gets me; all the crap they do that seems to level the playing field, while the real power remains concentrated in a very small number of people. No wonder the American Jacksonians and Jeffersonians give them fits!
- -
Are you an SF Fan? Are you a Tru-Fan?
Europe doesn't tend towards protection of privacy, they tend toward protection of the State.
The print incarnation of this rule has long been in force in Belgium, and it was funny, the local english-speaking magazine had to print a response by what is considered here to be a radical right-wing group (the Vlamms-Blok, more harmless than moderate republicans in the US, if you ask me); they printed the response, along with several articles sorrounding it (literally, on the page) about the introduction and severe abuse of the laws which mandate it, hence completely invalidating the response piece. They weren't even obligated to allow a re-response, it was great.
My real question is, though, how can something as widely defined as European online communication be expected to produce cases which can actually be enforced in court. What's to prevent me from using a US blogsite, or host my site on US servers? Nothing. There's nothing like Eurocrats speanding hideous quantities of time and money on something which proves useless by sheer virtue of its unenforcability.
"the total lack of regulation on the internet has led to a situation where anybody can say anything about anybody with no redress."
:>
you say this as if it's a bad thing. seriously: so what? are people stupid enough to believe everything they read online? if so, well, serves 'em right.
if i were to say, for example, that "bill gates consorts with dark powers in the basement of his home", that's just clearly silly.
similarly, if i said, "george w. bush is a moron as evidenced by his inability to pronounce a very common word correctly" what's the big deal?
people say stupid/ignorant things all the time; just ask rick santorum of pennsylvania.
ed
So what can I demand for authentication? I could refuse to accept any reply that was not hand-delivered because you can't be sure that it's authentic unless the individual themself shows up with the information. I guess notarization would be close enough, maybe.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Secondly, it will of necessity force adoption of mechanisms to authoritate message sources, something long overdue and which we shouldn't wait much longer on, lest Microsoft declare itself the authority, as is clearly its intent.
I don't see the basic idea as a threat to free speech at all. On the other hand...
I see potential for enormous practical problems. How can we avoid this mechanism being spammed? Suppose scientology sets up a spider/bot to search for every instance of scientology words on the web and to demand a link to their propaganda?
This could be quite a hassle for many low-resource high-controvery sites and subject them to a coordinated denial of service attack by opponents demanding links that would need to be added manually.
It could also nicely defeat the whole Google algorithm. It's easy to get my site highly rated if I can force inbound links!
In other words, while imho the idea has some basic merit, a great deal of thought needs to go into protecting it from abuse.
mt
No. The draft proposal says that a link is ok. It does not say that the person or organization that wants to provide a rebuttal needs to provide space for the reply. It looks to me like a statement like "Walpurgis Mart Sucks" could result in "Walpurgis Mart" requiring me to put up a 100 Mb response.
Even so, I do have a couple questions about links as required here.... If I link to someone's reply from a period (".")in my text, is that sufficient? How about linking from an image map? Or from some fancy javascript? Could my link be set up to popunder a 10 by 10 pixel window that looks like it originates from the people who dont like what I said and that refuses to close?
Enquiring minds and all that ....
Jim: So what are you in the hospital for?
Bubba: Somebody hit me accross the nose with a CPU... It looked like they tried to roll it up first...
--==-- I've found Karma to be a relative thing... Ya know, the kind you invite to Christmas...
If you criticized someone a few times in casual conversation, should you be obligated to then recite that person's side of the story in subsequent conversations?
Good job cutting to the heart of the issue. An excellent comment.
NAP - Not A Problem. See sig. It's that easy.
I really like this becoming a law - although I kindof suspect this is something we more or less already have regarding to newspapers in Sweden. Extending it to other means of publications sounds just about right.
it's in my head
Europe does lack American style "Freedom Of Speach." There's nothing wrong with the European model, it's just that most Americans woulden't put up with it, it's too damn letigious to open your mouth in Europe.
Just last week and Italian food-reviewer decried McDonald's food as ashitty food - and guess what, the Italian McDonald's compay is suing him for $25 million (USD) for his statments: more info
German libal laws are so strict, that you might as well not say anything controversial if your wan't to remain outside of the courts.
Just my $.02 worth (0.0178 EU)
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
If you don't allow them to counter, then it is your own fault.
If you DO allow them to counter, and their counter breaks your ISP's TOS, then it woudl be entirely reasonable for you not to publish their counter in that form.
Either way, there is zero problem.
Why exactly do you believe that libel should be allowed purely because it is an INDIVIDUAL'S website?
You'll find the latest draft here:
Note what the trollish C/Net editor skips in its article:
Reaffirming that the minimum rules in the appendix to Resolution (74) 26 do not go beyond granting a right of reply with respect of factual statements claimed to be inaccurate and that, as a consequence, the on-line dissemination of opinions and ideas falls outside the scope of this Recommendation;
"Reaffirming" refers to the Resolution (74) 26 where it is well specified that only false statements are affected by this "right to reply".
So the rest of the article is just C/Net trolling.
This is mainly because Europeans favored the extermination of the Jews
And Americans didn't? Polls from that time show Jews to be #3 on American's lists of "most dangerous groups".
Or the rule is intended simply to make life difficult enough to restore the operational ceiling of free speech to those with the means to publish information in conventional forms.
How could it possibly do that? This law would just bring the internet into line with 'conventional' media like newspapers, radio, television, for which such a right of reply is already a requirement.
In Belgium at least, this is not such a big problem: the press laws give everyone that is being criticized in the press a certain "right of rebuttal", but the law states that the newspaper or magazine or whatever that published the critical article in the first place should only reserve as much space for the rebuttal as was reserved for the original article. So if your criticism is only half a page long, the newspaper is only obliged to publish a rebuttal of about the same length. If this policy is extended to web sites (which I expect), the logical extension would be to allow only a rebuttal up to the same amount of bytes as the original article. So the company can't force you to host 100Meg files or any such stuff :-)
Before requiring me to post replies, keep in mind my HTML skills aren't all that good. I may accidently put it as size 1 font the same color as the background.
Say something like "the best complement I can come up with, for SCO, is that as lowdown, scum-sucking worms, they would be ideal for a deep-sea fishing trip. And this isn't criticism -- it really is a complement, and I do mean it from the bottom of my scumbucket.
Some people say that their lawsuit is a petty attempt to steal what was never theirs, but I really think that petty is too trivial for what they are doing: they are redefining the meaning of the term sludgehammer, and any coining of a new word is important, for it implies a new social status. "
If it isn't criticism, they don't have a right to reply.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
People, you have to remember that EU citizens have a healthy habit of just plain ignoring idiotic laws such as this one. And law enforcement people usually don't... ahem... enforce them...
...) are stupid enough to attack something like Slashdot (or your personal web site), so we are all probably safe for the moment.
Which is why I cannot too worried about it. Crypto was outlawed in France for years, for instance, but getting PGP was as simple as calling your firendly neighbourhood BBS and firing up that ZModem (I know, this happened to me!).
Besides, I doubt SCO (or Microsoft, or
Finally, if you have juicy information on, say, a clear violation of the GPL by Microsoft, you'd better back it up with some serious proof, so that MS can't sue you into oblivion...
In short: nothing to see here. Carry on.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
This business about a name and contact details sounds like a serious threat to anonymous speech.
Most ISPs will do that *anyhow* - on a simple lawyers letter saying the site is defamatory and/or contains copyrighted material of their client
Or, you allow them to reply, but they then create a reply that voilates your bandwidth TOS. Either way you're off the net. Your single voice will be stifled.
A link to a reply is apparently acceptable - you could just insist they host their own reply, and provide you with an url....
-=DaveHowe=-
I've already thought of a couple ways to subvert the intention of the rule and a couple more ways to just have fun with it all.
I think its a rather dumb rule, but would rather like to see it implemented just for the sheer amusement value of watching what happens. (Imagine, for instance, IMDB being required to post a rebuttal to every negative movie review. )
You already have the 'right to respond' - set up your own website/page and feel free to refute or debate anything you want.
I don't see why someone should have the right to respond at the expense of the person they are responding to.
Thats the beauty of the net - anyone and everyone has a right to publish their own opinion, as long as they pay for the resources they use.
Now, I can see if a professional news organization posts a critizism, that they might be motivited by their own desire to maintain a reputation of being fair to offer a *LINK* on their site to someone elses differing opinion (but not required to), but surely it's not right to require them to provide the resources for hosting that differing opinion.
You don't. You might have to link to it. Ignore the biased article. Try reading the actual report summary. Oh look, they're not enforcing the draft, they're still discussing it! And they've spotted everything you've complained about. What about the stipulation that the response must be made available for a period of time at least equal to the duration of the original criticism and at least 24 hours?
Does a Google cache count?
Not so. If you do not want the company's reply to be seen, then you are stifling *their* free speech, not the other way round. That's what the right to reply is all about. It *increases* freedom of speech by forcing debate. One-sided spouting-off must have a counter, or it is worthless.
"Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised."
-Marilyn Manson
just switch your blog to slashcode. You want to reply? Just click 'reply'.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
If I print a statement of my opinion about you on my personal Web site, operated on my own host, on the end of an Internet connection I pay for, you have no right to demand that I incur similar expenses to carry your opinion of my opinion. It doesn't matter how popular my site is, or whether you think of it as a "blog" or a "news medium" or what-have-you: the fact that I spend money to promulgate my opinion in no wise obligates me to spend money to promulgate yours.
To propose the contrary is indeed chilling -- because it means that if I post something you object to, you have the right to impose costs upon me. It means that unless I am able to bear the costs of printing both my own opinion and the opinions of everyone who disagrees with me, I cannot print my own opinion. It also means that if I am unable to countenance spending money to print the opinion of any particular objector -- for instance because said objector's views are vile and repugnant to me -- that I may not print my own.
Such a "right of reply" may be survivable by "big media" organizations which do not really have any views of their own. It would be, however, fatal to the "small media" organizations -- individual, idiosyncratic, and opinionated, devoted to exposing those sides of stories that do not get mainstream coverage -- that the Web in particular permits to thrive.
I AM a representitive of SCO and find it heighly demeaning that you do not trust me to post directly in the hournal.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Is this a requirement for newspapers in Europe?
(in UK) Yes via the Press Complaints Commission and similar right of response exists with broadcasters moderated by the Broadcasting Standards Commission
but this sounds very bad
I have to disagree, typically Broadcasters & Newspapers have much more power that the subjects of their reports. A right of response seems entirely fair and reasonable to me.
You put something on your site criticizing Company X. Now Company X demands that you publish their reply, which includes a retort to your comment, but also a complaint against Corporation A.
Now does Corporation A have the right to post something on your site, considering you never even mentioned them initially?
That would be pretty crazy (and funny)!
Wearing pants should always be optional.
I am never surprised by the number of small-minded short-sighted people I find on Slashdot.
First, it's a GOOD law, coming from a GREAT idea. Why? Simply put - it prevents major media outlets from doing a hachet job on a person.
It's unfortunate that we don't have this in the US, really. I can't count the number of times I've seen Newspaper, and especially TV, pull complete hachet jobs on folks. Tabloids make their LIVING off making outrageous statments that aren't true.
But go ahead. Keep thinking that you should somehow have a right to bash anyone you like without fear of repraisal. Then, when someone with a lot of money and power destroys your career publically (whistleblowers getting thrashed by their company, etc) don't come crying here.
Eddie Can Read posted a better post than mine about this scenario.
Sorry, I should have posted quicker.
If you have a blog and one day decide you just don't want to maintain it any more (or can't afford the fees associated with hosting, or whatever) and decide to take it down, should you then be required to keep the site running an additional period of time just to be sure the response is available for the same length of time as your original comment or longer?
No They just say that you need to keep the response a least 24h. If you delete the original article you can delete the response at the same time. You don't need to keep the response to an extent that the publication time of the response equal the publication time of the original article. Just 24h or as long as your article is published.
Because well all know that having to listen to the other guy talk back to you totally kills that whole communication thing. Nothing like having to consider both sides of an issue to ruin your pleasant complacency.
Besides, everyone would rather pay up or remove offending information due to libel suits instead, right?
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I would have a bit of a problem if the 'response' turned out to just a generic advertisement. In that case, I might actually ask for a text-only response up to about the same size as the original (although I'd allow links). That way, people would know that I wasn't wilfully pointing them at commercial advertisements.
Having said that, I think that there may be other possibilities -- like creating a page with my own warning that their 'response' seems a lot like an add to me, and then including the link.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
The fact that I am forced to post it meets the forced speech standard. As stated by someone else, newspapers ARE NOT required to post letters to the editor - good journalistic practice, yes, but not required. Similarly, blog writers SHOULD post responses in the interest of discussion, but requiring? That's insane.
It allows people to actually exercise their freedom of speech in a way that it matters. If microsoft says that I suck, I can say "no i don't" as many times as I want, nobody will hear it.
That's your problem - freedom of speech gives you the right to say what you want, not a medium or a forum. That's like artists who scream censorship when their work isn't subsidized by the government. They're wrong too, in that they are free to create whatever they want, and we're free to ignore it and not pay for it. For what it's worth, though, if MS's opinion of you is slanderous, you have the right to have them stop doing that if it's unfounded - one of your remedies against unfettered US free speech.
Ultimately, this is something that the Supreme Court dealt with a long time ago, check it out if you like. What Europe is doing would not be allowed here. Basically, the US view is "say what you want, however you want, however you can." By your example, get a blog if you want people to listen to you. By the marketplace of ideas, if they don't listen, perhaps it's because no one cares what you, or I, have to say.
As for the news being cleared up by right of response, that's completely infeasible and is the best evidence of the failing of your goal. So if I'm a news show like 60 minutes, I have to publish every response I get? They would cease to have a newscast. In effect, the forced speech requirement kills THEIR right to free speech. That's why it doesn't work, and won't work.
Bottom line is, the US has the most open interpretation of the 1st amendment (at least as it is written, if not implemented). Here, with few exceptions, no one can tell you what not to say - or what TO say, and it's that second part that people frequently forget about, though it's equally important.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Anyone who has dealt with the shipping industry, in paticular oil, knows that this isn't new. For instance
You are an American company using a Danish shipping company to move oil from Saudi Arabia to France. While the ship is in the middle of the Med you have an offer for the oil-tanker to sell in mid-shipment (this does happen) from a British company.
If there is any problem with the shipment, where do you sue ?
The answer is that this is agreed in the contract in advance, so you elect which country the case will be heard in. This isn't any different here as its the location of the individual not the actual hardware that matters when talking about end-vendor litigation. And the individual (or corporation) elects their designate country. For corporations this is limited to one of the traders, the base where the ship is registered or the source and destination ports.
For servers I can't see it being much else but the location of the individual as they are the only person involved in the transactions.
Shipping Law is much more complex as it deals with corporations who have more lawyers. This is IMO (IANAL) the worst case that could happen for the internet and only when large companies are involved. For individuals there is a very simple test
The nearest policeman is where the law applies. That means that the US can shut down the server if they want to, and the European police can arrest you for what was on it.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
A knee-jerk reaction might be to rubbish this as a crude measure, which infringes on free-speech, but upon consideration maybe it isn't so bad after all.
If you are confident in your criticism; if it's valid, and if it's true, then there is no problem with this. There ought to be no easy reply or rebuttal, and, if you still are in receipt of one of these letters, it shouldn't be too hard to show how it is invalid. Indeed, it might give you more opportunity to elaborate on your criticism.
If, on the other hand, what you write is merely polemic and diatribe, with poorly-researched or untrue facts, this law could be a major irritant. And here is where it would be most useful
Begaune maybe the internet needs more of the first sort of people and less of the second
((lambda x ((x))) (lambda x ((x))))
You are not obligated to provide a forum for their speech.
Freedom of speech doen't mean that you need to let them speak at your cost, merely that you can't stop them from speaking.
But of course, there's no freedom of Speech in Europe, just freedom for correct speech.
"You've got an invalid haircut" -Warren Zevon - Life'll Kill Ya
Most of the problems with this rule would go away if the law stated that links are the only necessity. In other words, if you want to reply, it's your responsibility to host it, and the offending site must only post a link. This would quell fears of offensive Slashdotting, and it makes more sense anyway.
Litigious bastards
Let's say you post some slandarous comment about xyz corporation on your personal log, simply, xyz is buttfaced or something silly to that effect. What if xyz's legal response is "no we aren't, you are a buttface." Are you then allowed to respond to that comment, and if you don't reference the company in your response, does that mean they are allowed another response?
I could just say "no i'm not." and leave it at that.
Would such a law not also force the ISP (or web host) to continue to serve both your original and the reply for at least the minimum time specified by the law?
Is it just me, or is that the stupidest comment ever on slashdot?
The article notes:
"Even today, Ireland, Portugal and the United Kingdom have not enacted a right of reply for traditional media, and it's a good bet that they won't for the Internet, either."
So the UK probably won't get this law, especially since if this proposal were passed, then it would be outright hypocritical not to apply it to traditional media. And the traditional media; tabloids, TV, etc, wouldn't be only too happy to crusade against such a law.
This hits the nail on the head - the article just seems to be a bit of an anti-EU stir-up - and he hardly does his credibility any good by inferring that we don't have any freedom of speech over here simply because we don't have a 'First Amendment' - (Having instead the European Convention on Human Rights).
the eu isn`t about 'the people', like such ideals which america was created upon. europe is being made by politicians for politicians, whereas the american constitution was designed exactly for the average person by the average people of that time.
eu law is for the eu politicians, it doesn`t care about the people, this is, practically a dictatorship which is slipping in under our noses.
i`m in the uk, hopefully we won`t be going into the eu, it's quite disgusting what the eu does stand for, the day the uk joins the eu is the day (hand on heart) i live my country, i`ll go live in australia or the US or something, no way am i going to live in an eu-state.
WTF is a sig?
EU is build on the foundation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (the national states in the EU have to make sure that their national laws don't conflict with the Human Rights, and EU citizens can take their case to the European Court of Human Rights if they feel that their Human Right is violated by an European country (for instance, free speech). This document is of course also the foundation of the UN and has its philosophical basis in the philosophers of the enlightenment (the most important of them being French philosophers) which lead to the French revolution and the American Constitution. Paragraph 19 of the Human Rights Charter states:
So, it is very wrong to state that EU lacks a "First Amendment".
The other claims are equally absurd.
--- guns don't kill people, people with guns kill people ---
I disagree. Speech without response is not speech. There is a reason why there are laws that restrict speech; you cannot yell "fire" in a crowded theater. You cannot make baseless claims against another (it's called libel or slander or somesuch ;)).
"Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised."
-Marilyn Manson
For example, the next time the RIAA goes on some spiel on a European website about how people who d/l mp3s are evil pirates who are destorying the recording industries profits, robbing artists of house and home, and eat babies on the side, who has the right of response?
Can any person who is willing to admit that they have traded mp3s force the RIAA or whichever site hosted the article to include a counter-response? If so, just the first person who responds? Or every response they get? Or would the file-traders need to form some kind of official group to make the response? Or does the RIAA get away with it because they're slandering a nebulous group rather than a specific individual?
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Company X's response is in the form of an extremely large file [...] My hosting company kindly then sends me a bill
/. discussion.
The draft says the precise rules should take into account "the technical specificities of on-line media". This includes the possibility of linking, and "There should be flexibility regarding the length of the reply since there are less capacity limits for content than in off-line media."
It is clear that they have not done away with "capacity limits" at all, they're just saying that a 5 page reply to a half page article is not the problem for a web page it'd be for a newspaper.
Whatever, I'm still inclined to be against the proposal. Hope to gain some insights from the
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
I thought one of the lofty, uptopian goals of the internet that we all hold out is that it will create dialog on issues. If someone can say something about me and I have no way to reply in that forum (vs. creating my own reply vehicle), then it is a monologue, not a dialog that is happening.
The requirement that a news organization be forced to take "letters to the editor" in response to their pieces doesn't impose an undo burden on the publisher. There is little, if any marginal cost to bundle up all of the replies to pieces in the last week and put them into the "Letters to the Editor Forum" or section of your ezine.
In terms of authentication, I believe a reasonable requirement to put down here, is that the person reply has to have a digsig verifying that they are who they say they are. Nothing big. Nothing burdensome.
This seems like sound public policy. It forces those that have a web based publication who write about someone to a level of accountability to those who they have written about. What is so bad about that?
It's chilling because it holds bloggers to the same level of accountability as CNN/BBC/FoxNews. They have the time and resources to authenticate and publish the other side. I don't have that luxury since I'm a college student who will probably be working part time soon and taking summer classes.
Europe should give liberalism a shot instead of finding every single possible way around it. Hey you never know, give your people freedom and you might actually not be inclined to slaughter each other and Jews like cattle.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
Like they were going to read it.
If a nation enforces right to reply in regard to media such as newspapers, radio and television, why should it not also enforce right to reply in other media?
I am unaware of any such enforcement of right of reply in newspapers, radio and television. Do European countries have that?
If you operate a newspaper, own your own printing and distributing operation, and pay the salaries of all your employees, I have every right to reply to remarks about me printed in your newspaper and you have an obligation to publish them. The same applies if you are printing a one-page mimeographed handout in your parent's basment. Ditto for radio and television. In all instances you bear the responsibilities that go along with operating a public media outlet.
I can think of no reason why an Internet publication should expect to be treated in a different manner. It is not a matter of whether or not a particular media outlet can bear the cost of running a reply. If an outlet, no matter how big or how small, can afford to publish remarks about someone, they can certainly afford to publish that person's reply. So, yes, I would expect you to bear the costs of publishing my response. That is part of the responsibility you assumed when you began to publish. (And consider, publishing my reply is very likely to be much, much less costly than responding to any lawsuit I might file.)
The key notion is that the technology used to publish is not relevant to this issue. An Internet resource that is available to the public -- such as Slashdot and all the posts on it -- is as much a public medium as any other, and should be expected to adhere to the same legalities.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
I disagree. Speech without response is not speech. There is a reason why there are laws that restrict speech; you cannot yell "fire" in a crowded theater. You cannot make baseless claims against another (it's called libel or slander or somesuch ;)).
You've got your examples all wrong. Yelling "fire" in a crowded theater when there is no fire is against the law not because people aren't allowed to respond (which they could) but because given the special circumstances such an act could lead to a panic and thus injuries or death.
Similarly, slander and libel have nothing to do with whether someone is allowed to reply to the slanderous or libelous comments. They are untrue claims made with malicious intent to destroy another person's reputation. Having a right of reply would mean nothing - if I print a false story about you saying you are a child molester, your little letter of reply "No I'm not" is irrelevant - the damage to your reputation is done. That's why these acts are crimes and are properly dealt with in court.
These laws I think are just further examples of the sort of meaningless, bien-pensant crap that is peddled in European politics today: they don't really do anything of value, they make the leftist elite feel good about themselves, and above all, they provide more fodder for the gargantuan bureaucracy who gets to pick up the mission to make sure that everyone complies with it.
I know this because Tyler knows this.
Eh, McDonalds is an American company. What does their suing (not the European way of doing things I might add) have to do with free speech in Europe?
--- guns don't kill people, people with guns kill people ---
I fail to see this as a problem, even for the people in need of bashing other people, etc..
One could just use any server OUTSIDE the E.U., and instead of the proof shit they're gonna force us to supply, you could stick up a picture of yourself and "Señor Fuck'ho E.U.io" shaking hands infront of the Colombian server (or whatever)..
This is a non-issue..
A horse can't be sick, you know, even if he wants to.
You can respond all you like, but to make me subsidize your response is to infringe my rights.
Libel is another thing entirely (And a matter for the courts).
"You've got an invalid haircut" -Warren Zevon - Life'll Kill Ya
Just last week and Italian food-reviewer decried McDonald's food as ashitty food - and guess what, the Italian McDonald's compay is suing him for $25 million (USD) for his statments
And how, exactly, is this less sane than suing McDonald's for a comparable ammount of money for serving you a cup of hot coffee..?
Ethics is what you say you do. Morals is what you actually do.
The thing that gives me shivers is 'morals'
:)
The rest of the responsibilities are fine (and are pretty much enshrined in the US through case law). But morals strikes me as allowing you to push all sorts of things. Mind you, I think that pushing that too hard can contravene article 9, so maybe it's just stopping you from having sex in public
What ever made you think that there was freedom of speech in any European country? I have news for you, there isn't!
Scenario 1
- I'm the editor of slash-effective.net.uk, the biggest site in the blog-sphere and I write an article rebutting Joe Grundy's undies.
- Joe Grundy publishes an obscure page on ambridge-village-life.net.uk, refuting my claims and Lynda Snell deals with all his dirty laundry.
Result: thousands read my account and few read his own rebuttal.
Scenario 2
- Joe Grundy publishes an obscure blog page ambridge-village-life.net.uk, write an article rebutting me as an ignorant townie with no knowledge of rural life.
- I'm the editor of slash-effective.co.uk, a tiny under-linked site in the blog-sphere and I write an article rebutting Joe Grundy's undies.
Result: Nobody reads his page so I'm not bothered. If I happen to be that bothered I can rebut his claims myself.
Whilst presented humorously this is a serious point. If I am larger and more powerful I have an obligation to allow fair access, that is what this proposed law will provide. If I'm smaller that obligation is worthless. The subject already has more power to spin their PR.
#1 Joe Grundy/Lynda Snell are characters in a popular radio soap who have just introduced a blog.
I really don't see why this law could be a bad thing. After all, it just states what I'd consider a matter of courtesy - if I criticise somebody, I'll give him the opportunity to defend himself.
Of course, this can be a burden on small site operators. But I still prefer an email asking me to post some reply on my website instead of a cease-and-desist letter from some lawyer....
It's funny. I saw a picture of the new EU flag on a website the other day and I started to think "Wow, it looks like Europe is poised to become a superpower able to rival the U.S." But, then something this bone-headed comes along and it reminds me that the "new" Europe still has the "old" Europe's ability to legislate itself into morbidity.
Let's see how long it is before they ask us for more aid.
If posting a URL to the information that the respondent provides, perhaps with a "govt approved" icon next to it, so that it will be easy to locate, is sufficient, then I seen nothing at all wrong with this. In fact, it seems beneficial.
(Then you can demand that they link to your reply to their reply, etc.)
If you are required to supply them with bandwidth, then this opens the gates to many abuses.
So implementation is the key. This could be either good or bad, but it sounds to me as if the probability is that this will mainly benefit society and individuals. (After many recent govt. actions, some cynicism is quite reasonable, however. But I wouldn't want to jump to an assumption that this will be bad against the evidence.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Also remember that in the US, you don't prove the claims are untrue in a slander or lible lawsuit. You have to prove MALICE.
Eh, McDonalds is an American company
It's the Italian branch of McDonalds that's sueing the Italian critic for $25,000,000.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
The EU = communism. In a few years, America will have to bail out Europe from totalitarianism again. But will we bother? Maybe we should just let them sink.
God Bless the USA.
Is it just me, or is that the stupidest comment ever on slashdot?
Yes, it is just you that's the stupidest ever.
HTH
Drudge has a better record for truth and accuracy than any of the major newpapers (Can we say New York Times?) and possibly most if not all of the boradcast networks too.
Freedom of speech is the right to say whatever you think. Not a manditory debate. You are also free to think and say whatever want even if it is untrue. This is especially important when the truth of the matter is subjective. More to the point, a business is in a far better position to rebut on thier own dime than to transfer that to the individual. Besides, a corporation doesn't have the same rights to speach as an individual.
"Is Europe secretly a band of neo-nazi fascist authoritarians? "
No, you seem to be confused. They are not "neo-nazi fascist authoritarians" by any strech of the imagination. They are the *new* Stasi..
Stasi was short for "Staatssicherheit", meaning "State Security", the main security and intelligence organization of the German Democratic Republic (GDR).
The Stasi monitored politically "incorrect" behaviour among all the citizens of East Germany.
FYI, the Stasi was a product of Communist Russia occuping East Germany.
If Neo-Nazi's were in control of the Internet in Europe you would most certainly know it because there would be a rising of a new Reich.
I know these things because I am an Adolf HItler worshiping Nazi. If Neo-Nazis were in control of things in Europe there would be a mass exodus of JEW$ and mud people fleeing Western Europe as White people from the world over migrate back to their ancestral homelands to reclaim what is rightly theirs.
Here's one place that the Europeans are screaming about, http://www.natvan.com
which is simply an organisation that promotes the rights of White people.
And this is the one place on earth where real free speech exists and that they want shut down,
http://www.halturnershow.com
Which is a nightly talk radio / News program that promotes the right of White people to speak freely.
So you see, there is no secret band of neo-nazi fascist authoritarians trying to shut down the internet, it's the COMMUNISTS that are in control..
So, everyone are all worried about this; the Internet media are scared to death about the potential consequences of this.
Hey - wake up - take a good look at the site you are reading right now.
A site that delivers news and where readers can talk back and have their reply shown via a visible link for at least 24 hours.
Download SlashCode, remove the A/C posting feature - there, you comply with the upcoming regulations.
Problem being?
Q: How does a Unix guru have sex? A: unzip;strip;touch;finger;mount;fsck;more;yes;umount;sleep
First your assertion that the constitution was written by average people is wrong. The constitution was written for the people by exceptional people.
The EU is being built today with some great people too. The idea that drives them is working together to avoid war, plagues, tension and be stronger as whole. The movement is driven by fear of empires and all the injustice that comes along with it. If everyone works together no one can be the empire that controls all. No more Napoleon, no more Hitler! Just countries working together for the greater good of the majority.
The EU is not scary at all. I find it's a refreshing thing to see some politicians working towards achieving a goal like this one. It encourages democracy and justice in many countries (see Turkey for example). Saying that this is for the politicians I fail to see how you calculated that one!
I'm not saying that everything will work great with the new EU, I'm just saying that it is building up to be great for every EU citizens. You'd be misinformed if you thought otherwise.
Yeah, but if the claims are true, you're screwed. Truth is an absolute defense.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Because their food really does suck, and the hot coffee caused third degree burns.
Therefore one is suing because they don't like the truth (less sane) and the other is suing for valid injuries (more sane).
Yeah, maybe it will have a chilling effect on blowhards who think they can shoot their mouths off without taking any criticism.
The only problem is the cost of verification. Really the government should take the responsibility for that. A simple PGP style digital signature system would work. Or even a more simple "if you have access to your website, you're you" rule. Sure, websites can be hacked, but what the hell you have to start somewhere.
This isn't a restriction of freedom of speech, it's just a requirement that makes you responsible for it.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
The power to publish your thoughts is still there. You can post whatever you want. But like all good debates, the other side gets a voice too...
Why not allow them to counter? If you have a good argument in the fist place there isn't much to be scared of.
And the policy allows for a reply to be hyperlinked to, so you don't have to host their reply, just link to it (so bandwidth TOS isn't an issue).
Imagine it the other way -- when a powerful entity criticises you... they would be forced to let you reply too.
--- If I had a funny sig too, you might be laughing now.
That's not it at all. You have the right to respond to whoever the hell you want. You can write MS a letter right now. What the law is forcing is PUBLICATION. I now have the responsibility to publish a response for any asshat who reads my blog. Oh, that's great.
And as much as I don't like MS, forcing them to post every response they get to their website is retarded. So now we can slashdot them by all writing them letters they have to publish? Ridiculous. That's a monstrously unfair burden.
The problem that we need to get rid of is the perception that freedom of speech is freedom of publication - it is NOT. MS, and the rest of us, have the right to not care a bit what you think. I mean, I don't really care what you think. I'm sure you feel the same about me, which is reasonable. It's nothing personal, it's just that neither of us have opinions that are all that unique or entertaining that there is any reason why someone should be forced to publish what we say. We're just not that cool. Sorry.
What it comes down to is something we always complain about on slashdot - why should the electronic world be different than the non-electronic? If I write a letter, is the recipient required to nail it to their front door for all to see? Is the newspaper required to run my letter to the editor? Is a news program required to give me airtime?
The answer to all those questions is no, despite that some CHOOSE in SOME instances to do just that. And broadcast TV is the most heavily regulated medium of all, so if they enjoy 1st amendment protection with regard to something, so does every other medium. Singling out the internet as a medium here doesn't make any more sense than it does with the DMCA or mindless vulgarity laws (COPA), so the proposition doesn't make sense unless you're going to force every other medium to do the same. And if you want to see TV and newspapers go to crap because every asshat who can use a keyboard or a pen has the right to be published, then that's the way to do it.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Opinions are rarely absolute truth. Life is lived in the grey areas. Without the protection and freedom to say WHATEVER you want, truth becomes whatever the powerful decide it is. Opinions matter.
Isn't this what we always wanted?
(Not a lawyer but would be interested to hear from one if TheCrazyFinn wishes to find out more...)
There is no such thing as "British Law". I believe there is "English" law (I think this covers England, Wales, Northern Ireland, principly, further info welcomed) and Scots law, covering Scotland... (apologies to various other bits of the UK that I've missed, history makes things sooooo complicated)
I'd be happy if anybody can provide a URL leading to some exact definitions, but as a starter, if somebody offers you a contract that is legal under British law, and it says so in black and white, it's worth nothing!! (found this out from our lawyer when we were writing up AUPs for our little company).
You are not obligated to provide a forum for their speech.
Freedom of speech doesn't mean that you need to let them speak at your cost, merely that you can't stop them from speaking.
Freedom of speech shouldn't always be restricted to 'those who own the presses'. I have 'freedom of speech' here on slashdot even though I don't own the servers. I have freedom of speech on my PC even though I don't own the network bandwidth. This law is giving people the freedom to tell their side of the story, not silence other people
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Heck, even the NY Times doesn't post John Ashcroft's picture superimposed on a snake on the front page - as much as they hate everything he stands for. But some UK paper did that to Chirac.
What a nasty little law - how would someone respond to such a parody? A naked picture to prove he really doesn't have a snake's body?
Practically also I feel the EU rule is a good idea. At least it'll give affected parties a forum to hit back without reaching out for their phone to call their lawyer and filing for defamation. I mean which option would you prefer giving your target a little space to express his counterpoint or having your blog shut down by his smooth talking legal team (and then making a big fuss on right wing forums like
And whats this talk in the CNET article about European lawmakers not "Getting" the Net. At least they don't come up with trash like the DMCA...
Its all the web hosting companies leaving europe for the US. Thanks Council of Europe!
The reaction to this has been way over the top. Not unusual for Slashdot, I'll grant, but still I'm suprised to see you moaning so much about a law that effectively enhances your freedom of speech.
Firstly, you're going over the top, because in reality this is never going to affect the little guy, any more than current laws make much difference to someone who prints off fifty copies of something to hand out to his friends. You won't see people or companies trawling the web looking for bad things said about them on every little web page. If your personal page doesn't get any traffic, why should they have any reason to bother you?
On the other hand however, if a site does get a lot of traffic, and they publish a complaint about you or your business, would you not be upset if they then told you that you couldn't have your own say?
All those people looking at that site will presumably accept what is said (after all, it's a high-traffic site, so it must have some respect among it's visitors), so you would be left with a load of people getting a negative view about you, with you not being able to do anything about it.
I think it's perfectly justified in that case that you would want to be able to put your side of the argument across.
Those who complain that the reply might be a huge document that would swamp their site are missing the point, and have obviously not seen how it already operates in the traditional press. Here in Europe, it is routine to see small panels in the corners of pages, making corrections to an article from a previous edition. This is how it works. The newspaper would obviously never publish a hundred-page reply, and neither would a web site be forced to publish a hundred megabyte file. Such a document or file would in any case defeat the point of the excersise (ie to correct any perceived misrepresentation), for the simple reason that no-one would read it.
I haven't studied the article or the proposed law in detail, but if it works in any way close to the way the existing laws work for newspapers, then only people who have anything to fear are those who routinely insult others... and they should probably be more worried about the libel laws, anyway.
(Spudley Strikes Again!)
"Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
So, it is very wrong to state that EU lacks a "First Amendment".
WRONG.. NO ONE has the right to free speech in the EU. Neo Nazi's are forbidden to speak freely about their beliefs. It's also a crime punishable by PRISON time to deny the JEWi$h account of the so called Holocau$t..
So you see, you are wrong my friend. There is no free speech in Europe and most of the rest of the world for that matter.
All this will do is get people to move their postings to servers into more liberal geographic regions.
This would mean that you would be required to post the responses as well as authenticate their origin and make the responses available for some period of time.
/.'ing caused by a single person trying to read it!
well, it seems to me if this is thier approach then my "response" to critisizm would be a message that says, "This is the precision to which I hate this article" and then add a 400 terabyte representation of PI. Since they are requred to post it, they'll have hard time keeping thier servers up due to disk space let alone a
[Because] maybe the internet needs more of the first sort of people and less of the second
And which type would you be?
There was a famous European guy in the 1930s and early 1940s that thought the world needed more of one kind of people and less of another kind. I can't seem to remember the details, and I am too busy to research right now... but well, you get the idea.
Those who forget their history are doomed to repeat it... or something like that.
What does the first amendment have to do with this law? The first amendment does not guarentee or deny the right of someone to reply to information posted publically about themselves.
In fact, the first amendment GUARENTEES the right of you to stand up and say what you want, including the ability to issue a public rebuttal against someone's comments towards you.
The closest amendment here would be the "right to confront your accuser" but this is only for court.
IANAL, especially a constitutional one, but I can't see how one would prevent this from passing in the United States on Constitutional grounds.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Circulation size and bandwith available MUST be taken into account or this law is loony.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
If some paper/magazine writes a critical article on your person or organization, this gives you the right to post your rebuttal to the same audience that read the initial article - which seems OK for me.
Just out of curiosity, what would you do if my response to your criticism was 40,000 pages long? What about 40 billion pages long? What if it's a virus? What if it's child porn? Is there anything in the law saying what the response can be? Or does it just say that, whatever my response, you have to post it?
If I make a bunch of allegations about some person or company, why shouldn't they be allowed to respond? Most of the posters here seem to be looking at this from the angle of Some Giant Company forcing Some Pathetic Little Blog to publish a corporate press release (as if this were a great imposition, anyway.) Look at it the other way: if Some Giant News Agency runs a story which reflects badly on you, you get a chance to refute the charges in the same venue, which is a much nicer deal than posting something on your blog to be read by a few dozen people while the BBC gets to defame you before millions.
Consider the case when Microsoft or SCO spread their lies about Linux or, for that matter, competing companies. Suddenly, Microsoft doesn't get to run the whole show -- at least in Europe -- and it becomes much harder to spin bullshit without a challenge.
This is all about the "marketplace of ideas." It's just ensuring that the marketplace of ideas is open to everyone instead of just those with deep pockets. I can see how this wouldn't appeal to the socially-Darwinian cash-equals-merit Libertarian crowd, but those less ideologically rigid ought to be able to see that this is a sword that cuts both ways and if it lets the big guy shaft the little guy, the little guy can shaft him right back, and with greater effect.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
I don't understand all this fuss about blogs, etc. The recommendation, as presently worded, clearly applies only to 'professional on-line media' (see below).
Unless you blog for a living, this won't apply to you. Not that I don't think it's overly restrictive, but believing it would apply to all varities of online publishing seems completely against the authors' intention.
Definitions
For the purposes of this Recommendation:
the term "professional on-line media" means any natural or legal person or other entity whose main professional activity is to engage in the collection, dissemination and/or editing of information to the public on a regular basis via the Internet;
the term "information" means any statement of fact, opinion or idea in the form of text, sound and/or picture.
Editorialized publications are not required to publish responses, at least not in the USA
Who the F said anything about the USA and who the F cares!?
Talk about a storm in a glass of water...
Ethics is what you say you do. Morals is what you actually do.
Worst Example Ever.
The "McDonalds Coffee Lawsuit", as it has become known, was vastly misrepresented by the press. If you look at the actual facts, McDonalds deserved what happened. For more information:
http://lawandhelp.com/q298-2.htm
Please, stop using this as an example of a specious lawsuit. It is, in fact, a case of the judicial system working as it is supposed to work.
-[Blaine]- "'Oh dear,' says God, 'I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic."
So Alice posts something defamatory and untrue about Bob, Charlie reads it, and is stupid enought to believe it. Bob loses custom and therefore money.
According to you, it serves Bob right because Charlie is stupid.
This is insightful now?
NO ID: BEING FREE MEANS NOT HAVING TO PROVE IT
From the article, about halfway down:
"""
January 2003 draft envisioned regulating only "professional on-line media." Two months later, a March 2003 draft dropped the word "professional" and intentionally covered all "online media" of any type.
"""
Thus, blogs.
\
Finally, a place on the Internet that passes one law that actually MAKES sense...
North America can only dream...
stating something about object A (person or not) on the internet, is akin to stating something in public, thus the object being discussed should have the right to reply, much like in the real world.
Makes perfect sense.
This would actually be a good feature of online publications. There is already often support for feedback. It would be worthwhile to add support for verified responses from the entities discussed (possibly leading off-site, so that if MS complains about you, and someone complains about MS, it's MS's responsibility to handle the second complaint).
If you think about it, "reply" is what most publications actually most frequently want, and the offended party is generally not forthcoming. You always see "(Company) was not available for comment", and whenever you hear about a GPL violation, people eagerly await the violator's response. For all of these SCO stories, my first thought is "What does SCO have to say about that?"
The hard part, of course, is accurately identifying the party with the right to reply, since it would be bad to accept somebody else's comments instead of the actual party involved.
This would cover the "right-of-reply" to legitimate users of electronic mediums who wish to rebut inflammatory or negetive comments about themselves/their company/their product, etc - which would be a good thing.
The problem is, that the onlne would is far, far, from ideal. Taking slashdot as an example... everyone has a voice, even the annoying little AC trolls. Now, that's great for those that have something interesting/important to say, and slashdot has a nice moderation system to allow us to filter the good from the bad.
However, a lot of online systems don't have a ratings system, or would find it just too much of a hassle to include/support. I see a few solutions, but I'm not sure if they're workable.
For sites that must offer replies, force a registration system that must be stronly legitimized. Yes, again, added hassle sometimes to add such a system, but at least it gets rid of the drive-by-trollings by making trolling inconvient as well. Couple that with a signup requiring a "I agree to terms" page, and you're set. Really, most sites allowing comments do have a method for user authentication anyways. Still, I can't see all sites out there allowing this.
And personally, I think whomever drafted such a law should be forced to shave with bad razors while swimming in the middle of shark-infested waters. I'd rather have them feed our local marine life than the trolls that would benefit from such idiot rules...
First, I'm an American, don't go calling me some stupid European who knows nothing about the USA. I'm a smart american who knows how stupid americans are ;) (ment with humor).
Secondly, American's are saying this is "unconstitutional" or "it shifts costs of replies to the owner of the site."
Show me an amendment that grants the right of the original poster of a comment on the internet the right to not have to display a rebuttal? That's insane. There is no such constitutional amendment preventing this. In fact this is more constitutional than unconstitutional. I would be guarenteed the right to "free speech" in responding to my accusers. It would have a chilling effect on media, but this is a GOOD thing. People should not go around accusing others of poor decision making without proof. If fact, would media be better if it were about multiple parties sitting down and discussing the issue rather than getting one editorial point of view?
Also, this is from an editorial point of view. Note in the United States if I said "Michael Jackson is a child molester" and this had serious effects on his reputation and I had no proof, Mike can already sue me under Slander/libel law. If I come out and say "George Bush has made terrible decisions and here is what they are," I would be rather elated to find George posting on my website a rebuttal. I could then engage him in direct discussion. If I reported on some joe shmoe down the street who had an internet connection but no site and criticized him for his lawn care, then perhaps he should get the right to rebutt so he can tell everyone why rather than get just one point of view.
Finally, if you are posting about your people in your neighborhood and how dumb they are for doing this or that, and they don't have the ability to reply on your website, who does that hurt? It hurts them! You shouldn't be posting such information without proof to back it up and if they can rebutt you they should have the right. Otherwise its a one sided publication, and not a discussion.
What's nice about this proposal is that it would turn media into an open forum. Yanno.... like slashdot.
And you would think Slashdotters would be all over that idea.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Anything that can cause third-degree burns isn't remotely edible. The woman in question (who wasn't driving, and the car wasn't moving) sued for only her hospital bills (she needed skin grafts on her groin) and legal fees, but the jury was pissed off at how McDonalds handled the incident (this wasn't the first) and awarded her something like one day of McDonalds' gross revenue on coffee (which was later negotiated down in a settlement.
Hello? When I disagree with you, I am not obligated to then repeat your response word for word out loud for all to hear. If you want to respond, you respond in whatever forum is open to you. THAT is free speech, not some ridiculous law that says I have to pay for your response.
the day the uk joins the eu is the day (hand on heart) i live my country
Well then, off you go! Shoo, shoo! You already joined it years ago when you signed the Maastricht Treaty!
Yes, recent polls have shown that Britons are the EU citizens most unaware of the union...
Ethics is what you say you do. Morals is what you actually do.
Let's say XYZ oil company says in the public relations section of their website that "we really care about the environment".
Can they be obligated to post a link to my blog if I rebut? I mean, all I have to do is list the facts why I think they're not telling the truth...."XYZ oil company wouldn't violate environmental laws so often if they really cared about the environment....".
I mean, it sounds like the opinion-expressing blogger is expected to live up to a higher standard.
Some people argue that I just have to give a link to an opposing opinion, but why should there be extra hurdles to jump if I want to just say something? There are already slander and libel laws, right? Why should my opinion have to be validated as factual?
Interesting. So, if a Conservative Christian magazine writes a pro-life article, then an abortionist can write back defending their position? I think that sucks. People read certain magazines, newspapers, or websites becuase they like the point of view of the news source (or in some cases to keep in touch with what the competition likes). They don't want their territory invaded.
At the next eco-hypocrisy-meeting, count the private jets used to get to the meeting. Should be interesting to see that
The article cited Dalzell's opinion in the CDA case, but didn't explain the most important part: the difference between the internet and radio. If I don't like your weblog entry, I can post my own entry in my own weblog criticising it. If I don't like your radio comment on me, what can I do? I can't start my own radio station, because there's limited spectrum. The limited amount of spectrum is only reason the FCC can regulate the content of radio in the first place. So, a right of reply make sense in the radio context, where otherwise you might have no forum. But on the internet, everyone has a forum, so a right of reply is unneeded.
I've also seen some people here claim that it's not an imposition on freedom of speech because you can still publish what you want, or that it *is* an imposition because it will have a "chilling effect." I think these people miss the point. The reason it violates freedom of speech, is because it's *compelled speech* -- it's the government mandating that I have to publish things I disagree with. In radio, where there's limited spectrum, everyone has to sacrifice. But on the 'net, there's no need for that.
Become a FSF associate member before the low #s are used
Who is preventing people from telling their side of story? If this is about people who are upset that no one will listen to their side of the story: I'm sorry, that's not a free speech issue. There is no right to be heard.
So, why not impose the same costs upon those which you disagree with? It's a double-edged sword, you know. Think of how quickly this could turn around public opinion on SCO's stance towards Linux, or the RIAA if all of their internet and print statements were forced to included dissenting points of view.
IMO, their needs to be a limit to some forms of "Right of Reply", but the contention that this will effect the small presses negatively is a bit over-wrought, methinks. If you have no readers, why should you care about the right of reply, and if you DO have readers, why should you be considered different than an independent newspaper? You CANNOT have it both ways.
Let's say you have a blog with medium recognition. You get a request for someone's response to an opinion you published. Since the request is being done by your web design staff (i.e. yourself), who have terribly important duties to attend to, a modest "administrative fee" would probably be legal in a situation like this. $10-$20 dollars for time and effort seems right.
Trolls would be discouraged, more information would flow, and your pocket just might get fatter (or at least deflate slower) in the process.
----------
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
To be fair, both the pro- and anti-American sentiments get pretty d@mn jingoistic. I know both groups have their reasons but the stands they take can easily reach absurd levels.
The power to publish your thoughts is still there. You can post whatever you want. But like all good debates, the other side gets a voice too...
Back here in reality, debates seem to work just fine where the attacks and responses appear in different forums (like various op eds to battling press releases). There's no reaosn I should have to pay for your response just because I feel like speaking my mind, and put money and effort into getting my words out there. Getting your response out there is YOUR job, and YOUR money and effort to spend.
I don't understand why the parent post has been modded down to -1 Troll. It's a valid opinion, even if succinctly stated. It is also, I believe, the correct opinion.
This law would be a violation of our personal freedom, and it scares me that so many posters don't see that.
When I spend my own money to set up my own website, it is to publish my own opinion. If I am forced to spend my money to publish someone else's opinion, then I am a slave.
It seems to me that this is another law by politicians seeking to protect their own interests. This law will give the government in power the ability to counteract the opinions of anyone opposed to that government.
I could start listing historical examples of evil people who would have found this law useful in their quest for power, but I think you can come up with those on your own.
This would put Fox News out of business.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
No - not at all, as there would be no criticism in that article, merely a point of view. On the other hand, if the Christian magazine wrote an article claiming that "some pro-abortion group were a bunch of smelly weenies", or similar, then they have "criticised" the group, and the group is entitied to respond.
The law doesn't force any magazine to host a debate, merely that if they are critical of someone, then that person has the chance to defend themselves.
Your response can not exceed the length of the original article. It is also required to be printed with the same font-size as the original.
If the town square scenario isn't convincing, how about any venue in which, say, a nobel prize winner is invited to speak and that person goes on a long discourse about how humans are damaging the earth, that the fault is with the evil oil companies, big business, automobiles, Bush, whatever. To be consistent, whoever he lambasts should have a right to respond at the same venue. Ideally, that might be great, but perhaps the folks hosting the talk cannot afford (in time and money) to provide for this reply and provide the original guest with sufficient time to present his ideas.
Some comedians are really just thinly-vieled political commentators (Carlan, Gallhager, for instance). At times, very funny, at others, more sobering and thought-provoking than anything else. Should they have to provide for a rebuttal?
The bottom line is, you can't mandate debate. There is no way to ensure it will actually happen. More than likely, you are going to get two pontificating positions, with no real give and take or exchange of ideas.
Some will say this law doesn't apply to the forums I described. I say that is invalid because you should be guided by principles and there is no particular reason to control electronic or print media over in-person, vocal media.
"If you do not want the company's reply to be seen, then you are stifling *their* free speech,"
How? You mean the company doesn't have the resources to get their messages out?
Even a child could tell that this is essentially a way to stop people from criticizing business and corporate interests.
This has nothing to do with "free speech"; it is the opposite of free speech; it assumes a corporation has the same rights as a person. Disgusting.
Censorship gets all the attention, but it's not the worst abridgement of press freedom.
The worst is when you're told, under threat of force, to put something on your newspaper or your web site.
To see the chilling effect, imagine this: you criticize, say, neoconservatives on your full-time blog. The law requires you to publish a reply. Who gets to reply? Remember, if you guess wrong, the meat grinder of the legal system awaits you.
Google for the history of the Fairness Doctrine, an older FCC regulation requiring TV stations to offer equal time to opposite sides of an issue. It's not completely comparable ("equal time" on a web site is MUCH cheaper), but the effect was that the mass media backed off on the most controversial topics.
Essentially, passage of this law necessitates government intrusion into the editorial process. Instead of the publisher deciding what is appropriate to print, a government official (judge ot bureaucrat) will make that decision. So long, freedom of the press!
Anyways, the 1st amendment absolutely guarantees you the right to say (just about) anything you wish; but it does not provide you with the resources to do so. You are free to publish your own response, but requiring your adversary to pay for that cost is the opposite of what the 1st amendment guarantees.
In essence, the government is prohibited from exercising editorial control over the media. Seems like a good idea to me! Say whatever you want, but don't expect those who disagree with you to publicize your views.Yes, this has been a problem for a while and is getting worse.
The responses to this article are, alas, all too predictable. "It violates my civil liberties!" they cry. "It's abusing freedom of speech!" "You couldn't enforce it anyway, because it would cost too much!" "How do I check someone is who they say they are?" Do they really believe that no-one's thought of this stuff before?
Well, guess what, kids. With freedom comes responsibility. We can agree that you have the right to say what you wish, but only if you accept the consequences of what you say. If I suffer harm, physical or mental, because you said something about me that wasn't fair, then you owe me fair compensation for that.
This sort of action was inevitable, and is a direct and proportionate response to many people abusing the privilege of free speech on the Internet. The "I should be able to say anything I like without fear of response!" advocates should consider themselves lucky that European governments aren't considering a scheme that removes anonymity on the Internet entirely and opens the online world to prosecution under existing libel laws.
(No, you couldn't get absolutely everyone, as a few people would know enough to remain truly anonymous. Technologically, you could easily get the vast majority, though.)
This is not a play school. People on-line can and do get away with mass fraud, posing as doctors and offering poor medical advice, destroying rival businesses' reputations through posting completely untrue horror stories, and more. None of this is justifiable under the banner of "free speech", and nothing in the European proposal restricts your free speech. It simply means you'll be held accountable for what you say, and why the hell shouldn't you be?
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Imagine a world where you sit down with your friend in a pub, and you say loudly "I think GianticCo sucks".
The pub then has to phone GianticCO and say "Well, Mr. Anderson says you suck, so we'll wait until you come down to counter his opinion".
Immediately, you'd draw the conclusion Mr. Anderson has no free speech because the government is regulating the circumstances in which he voices his opinion.
Now Mr. Anderson writes his opinion down and shows it to his friends. Does he need to contact the manufacturer for an alternate viewpoint?
Then Mr. Anderson gets fed up and hires a bi-plane to skywrite "GIANTICCO SUCKS!" over the sky. Does Mr. Anderson have to pay for an opposing bi-plane? No, of course not.
But put it on a web site and all the sudden its subject to regulation?
Like I've said all along, Europeans don't want free speech. It scares them and they look for someone to hide their eyes and cover their ears.
But hey, "free" health care.
Precisely. All the law really needs to allow is the right of the allegedly aggrieved party to link to the allegedly offending page in the alleged offender's site. I don't think that this is too burdensome -- IMHO the "right" to prevent people from linking to pages in your website is somewhat questionable to start with.
That way, anybody who wants to evaluate the reliability of a webpage can simply go to Google, search for links to that page, and read what those linkers have to say.
" It's chilling because it says that people have to take responsibilty for their actions. Some people don't like that."
I have to roll my eyes at you.
Every time you make an opinion public, you suffer the consequences all on its own. People can post a counter opinion on their own web site, or if it really libelous, they can sue you.
So I don't understand why you think there are no consequences. Perhaps you're not well thought out and don't really understand how the world works?
You can have a tiny link for replying, then someone can send you an email and say they want to have it posted on the website, if there even aware they can, and then all you need to do is throw it in with your next blog/etc.
Because Innovation is not doing it on it's own.
Legislation usually steps in to take up the slack.
Now if *every* website was retroactively forced to carry a guestbook imagine the delight of the scores of newly trained HTML monkeys being churned out day after day from 16+ colleges across continental Europe.
Next step is mandating that the posters use some sort of Europe wide centralised identification database to validate them.
One of the early applications will be chat rooms where the participants will be validated as children.
We'd then have a situation where anyone can say anything about anyone but as a matter of public record and where both parties are validated.
If I meet a new person I can then review their posting record and make judgements about them.
The implication being that having to live in the open tends to make people more honest. Besides you'll be able to cross reference the record of the people making any accusations to see if it's a habit etc.etc.
As for my position well, I want either the freedom to be anonymous or for everyone to be forced into the open.
If it thought it was feasable I'd support the idea of a droid that records your every move used in Ian M. Banks' sci-fi novels concerning "The Culture".
If I can access the every move and utterence of *everyone* else and they have access to mine then where's the problem?
Sadly the implementation must be all or nothing from day 1 as the evolutionary steps make the place worse not better from the disparity on who can watch whom.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
point 2:
>Hyperlinking to a reply is acceptable. "It may be >considered sufficient to publish (the reply) or make >available a link to it" from the spot of the original >mention.
Basicly they have the right to write their story but not the right to use your press.. eh.. diskspace/bandwide
Nobody expects the spanish inquisition!
I think people should go and read the proposal.
Principles concerning the right of reply in the on-line environment
Definitions
For the purposes of this Recommendation:
the term "professional on-line media" means any natural or legal person or other entity whose main professional activity is to engage in the collection, dissemination and/or editing of information to the public on a regular basis via the Internet. [Emphasis mine]
Right. That clears most of the bloggers, amongst others.
Now just imagine for one second, that a company like Microsoft who has a habit of posting much FUD on its web sites regarding Linux, and Open sourced Software in general, might be required to post, or at least link directly (and prominantly) to, replies which refute many of their claims.
Sure, this proposed convention might have some downsides, but it could also serve a very worthy purpose.
Neo-Nazis in Germany can go to the European Human Rigths court in Strasbourg and make a case against the German goverment if they feel that their free speech rights are violated. This is exactly equivalent to some organization taking a complain to the supreem court against a law that they feel is in violation of the First Amendment. If the German goverment loses their case, they will have to change their law on this issue. I don't think such a case has been brought against the German goverment (it might have, I just don't know about it) but such a court case would be quite difficult since you also have to discuss the rights of the jews that are misrepresented and also the German history's link with Nazism. And of course the muddy issue of what constitute a true "belief", what is really "propaganda", and who has the power to "write history".
If you feel strongly for those poor neo-nazis you can even file a case yourself to the ECHR.
--- guns don't kill people, people with guns kill people ---
I was going to patent the Google idea. Force everyone to link to my site who says anything even remotely non-complimentary and I've got it made. Next time I'll try to get the patent filed as soon as I read the slashdot story.
It's not about "having a free, open debate". It's about whether or not I should be forced to subsidize views I disagree with.
If I criticize somebody and he wants to make a rebuttal, more power to him. But not on my website, in my newspaper, or on my TV show. Freedom of speech means just that--you are free to speak your mind if you can do so. It does not guarantee an audience, nor does it guarantee a forum from which to express those views. There is no valid reason to force someone to subsidize the expression of views he disagrees with.
"Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"
The move to 'right of reply' by the Council of Europe is a godsend for objective news and fair reporting. And this is good for all people who read information on the web and use it in their daily lives. In America, where there is no 'right of reply' almost all the mainstream websites contain false information. Imagine if there was a way to put more objective facts in the news instead of the politico-spin that Americans are force fed? Many blogs contain absolutely incorrect information about companies, happenings in the world, other people, etc. And where there is just 'one side', there is no dialogue, no conversation. And when someone can see an entire conversation, it makes the subject more clear and understandable than just seeing one side. Let's say your ex-girlfriend puts some poisonous stuff about you in her blog. Which just happens to be read by your mutual friends. Wouldn't you like to reply? Wouldn't you want to tell it like it is? The 'right of reply' makes people think twice about slandering other people. It makes people consider what they are going to say as they could easily be shown to be liars, manipulators, etc. The caveat is that for 'right of reply' to work for ordinary people, more liberal 'freedom of information' acts must be passed. Governments and corporations will have to open up their records so that objective facts can be accessed. And it is very difficult to tell what will happen here. In America, Bush has rolled back the Freedom of Information movement by 20 years at least. Of course, Bush is in the position of greatest danger of running into problems as his administration has little basis on objective facts. So the chances of 'right of reply' happening in the US are slim to none, at least with the current administration. Overall, this is a great move by Europe. Perhaps they will even start getting tough on the US vis-a-vis privacy laws instead of giving the US more and more extensions and loopholes. Provided there are liberal freedom of information laws to back it up, 'right of reply' will help build human communities that are far more human than what we have today.
The problem with the European Convention on Human Rights is they included loopholes for just about everything so even the most despotic government can stifle all freedom and still abide by that piece of paper.
You should read it sometime. It's a masterpiece of absolute EU bureaucratic bullshit - promising everything, delivering nothing.
-- Will program for bandwidth
Two games corporations play on their blogs:
#1 They delete posts by people that disagree.
#2 They use smoke and mirror shouting.
God spoke to me
Nowhere near enough.
"How long does it take to create a link on your site to an organization's rebuttal?"
I'll answer your question after you answer mine:
Why is the government in the business of regulating speech by private citizens?
You do have a right to certain forms of protected speech.
You do NOT, however, have a right to be heard.
Thank you, come again.
Why would the internet be diferent?
Get real and do real laws, not laws of no significance...
Not only do the lawyers send the C&D letter, but you also have to at least link to their letter on your site. I'm looking forward to church-affiliated web sites having to give equal time to Satanists. This ought to be fun.
Right on brother!! Amen!!
You can't win Darth. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
Contracts generally don't claim to be legal under any particular law. I think what you are referring to is the clause that specifies the jurisidiction for any court actions arising under the contract. You are right that stating that it would be governed by British law wouldn't be worth anything. However it wouldn't necessarily invalidate the rest of the contract as there are other means of determining jurisdiction for lawsuts (such as where the contract was signed for example). Usually any bad wording in a contract leaves you wide open to having that part essentially rewritten by a judge who would try to determine what the parties intended when they entered into the contract.
And his "Stupid White Men" got "squashed" so well you knew about it. Really effective, that "squash".
Grow a brain.
"Why the hell not?"
Does that qualify as critical thought in your country?
If I pay for a web page.
And on that web page, I say "KKK have been proven to be a hate mongering group". The KKK probably won't like that.
But I've presented as "fact" that the KKK is bad. But the KKK, I'm guessing thinks they're pretty moderate.
So they contact me, and say "You are so wrong. We advocate peace between the races. You must post a link to our site to prove you wrong".
In the marketplace of ideas, I simply say "Well, fuck you and your racist red-necks". But in your world, I have to publish that link.
And for what? On the web, an alternate "fact" is a URL away. But I have to now publish a link, because it complies with a weird view of free speech. In fact, its the opposite of free speech because now I can't present my ideas. I have to worry about someone else's idea of "fair".
Guess what... who *cares* if a web page if fair. If I have a compelling website that tells the facts the way I want them presented, then that's great. If the "other guy" has more compelling ideas, he will win.
Enough of the nannyism. Government doesn't exist to create equality of results, only equality of opportunity.
To put it in this context, government only has to ensure that everybody has the ability hire a web site. It says nothing about all sides of the discussion being aired.
Your egalitarian view is one that would be appreciated by 12 year olds, as it appeals to a juvenile sense of justice.
In the real world, large multi-nationals will use this kind of law to crush criticism.
But hey, as long as its *fair*.
yuo rthe fuck
This makes sense for public television and radio stations whose continued monopoly right to broadcast on their particular frequency is in fact supposed to be dependent upon their serving the needs of the community.
However, it does not make sense for private publications. If I make a magazine about Republicans and how much they suck (nya nya) and distribute it only to paid subscribes and receive no government subsidies, then no, I do not have to publish your response.
This is an unacceptable limit on MY freedom of speech, and in certain cases, of religious expression.
Do Christian publications need to regularly publish replies from atheists by law now?
If someone talks about their opponent, directly or indirectly, they should provide money for their opponent to voice a rebuttal...
Ok, so let's say that I'm Joe Consumer who doesn't like a product made by Corporation X. I complain about the product, and the people I had to deal with in getting the product sorted, etc.
Now, let's say that instead of acting as a single corporation, I get replies from manufacturers of the product, product testers, and maybe the customer support person, her supervisor, etc., etc. Any large corporation could find a way to effectively reqard their internal people and swamp me, with my little blog, with lots of replies.
Better yet, let's put this forward to political views! Now smaller groups who don't like what a large group does or says now has to post responses? Right!
I guess this is very pro-democracy in ideal, but it also sounds like tyranny of the majority, with my individual rights of expression possibly being trampled.
(Passing sweeping legislation is often like using a nuclear warhead to kill a fly. Yeah, the fly dies, but so do many others, and it takes a far longer time to clean up the mess.
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. - G.B. Shaw
In europe, you have no guarantee of free speech and free press.
Its hidden under catch-phrases like "human dignity" and clothed in "fairness". Effectively, it gives the right to censor for unpopular opinions.
Sorry that scares some people in France and Belgium, but the governemnt is not a mommy making sure feelings aren't hurts and no knees are scraped.
No wonder hitler came to power in europe. You enjoy being told what to do.
The current law for offline media also mandates that the size of such a rebuttal should be 'reasonable' (ie: no free full-page ads) with regards to the media in which it is published.
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
[Zappa]
Response from _____
*** expletives deleted ***
*** goatse link deleted ***
*** 39,999.5 pages deleted ***
I can say whatever I want, and I don't need to provide anyone with a forum for rebuttle.
If I am a slanted publication, it will soon be obvious and I will not succeed in comparison to more balanced news sources. For instance, look at the success of the Fox News Channel.
It is an individual's responsibility for acquiring information from several sources in order to gain an understanding of what is "really" going on.
The Internet is free (as in freedom).
It will be painful to see this freedom slowly ripped away from the people who embrace it.
what do you think those comments are for???
stop supporting microsoft with pirating their software!!!!!
Why should anyone have to go to court to speak their beliefs? It should be the opposite. I have the right to say whatever the hell I want, and if someone is to try to stop me, *they* must go to court.
In your world, if a article runs counter to the prevaling line the government wants to push, it will be squashed under vague "human dignity" concerns.
It happens all the freaking time in European countries.
This would all go easier if you simply said:
"I [insert your name here] am a citizen of [insert country] and the EU. Free speech as the Americans describe is dangerous and so laws must be written that must always take into account human dignity, freedom from pain, and sensitivity to the human condition in which we all live. In other words, I'm all for free speech except when I disagree with it. And please put people in prison for stating an opinion that's not popular because it affects their human dignity."
"Forcing the issue legally allows discussion to take place. Without a right to reply, you merely have one person/group spewing whatever they wish without a dissenting voice."
But so what? If people don't like you at one web site, go to another.
I'll bet when you were a kid, your parents were always going down to the school to "stick up for you".
Loser.
Names you personally (either individual or as a legal entity/company)
Contains criticisms or facts concerning you that you feel have been misrepresented. Since the power of the media to personally attack someone (be it an individual/company) is very great, this law warrants your right to having your side of the story published as well.
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
[Zappa]
"First and obviously, it will weaken the tendency for people to build isolated self-referential extremist commmunities of delusion, like fundamentalists, deconstructionists, ultralibertarians, etc., without linking to contrary evidence."
You say this as a good thing, but I'm looking at you with a combination of shock and horror. People should be allowed to hold their own opinions and state them freely. Even if they're wrong. Its a basical human right too state opinions with no interferece, particularly from the government.
If you are really serious, I think I understand why people left Europe to come to North America. They were sick of this kind of attitude which is basically being a busy-body. "Oh, you think the wrong way, let me help you see the correct way to think".
Your kind *really* scare me.
Here is a more exhaustive list of all human/civil/political rights treaties/conventions/agreements/declarations the EU countries adhere to.
In Europe there's a hell of a lot more legislation guaranteeing human and civil rights than a constitution and a hand full of amendmends..
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
" "Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind." - Albert Einstein"
Yes, I like to quote physicists about government makes sense.
I wonder what George Bush has to say about physics? Maybe that makes more sense.
Maybe you want to quote Brittany Spears on Free Speech? Or maybe Christine Aguillara on Geology. I'm going to be interviewing Tony Blair on hair styles next week.
needed for said rebuttals ? and where do I send the bill ? Otherwise welcome to the offshore hosting option, but of course they will make that illegal soon too.
The US HAS its' problems, but I am still glad to live here, if we could just get someone to take King George off our hands we could 'disappear' A$$crap and go back to being a normally dysfunctional nation.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
British generally equals Scottish+English. Note that much of English law covers Scotland too.
"You've got an invalid haircut" -Warren Zevon - Life'll Kill Ya
Your response can not exceed the length of the original article. It is also required to be printed with the same font-size as the original.
Ok, I'll bite... My response would be:
The home address of the reporter who wrote this story is:
123 Fake Street
Anywhere, Fooland 12456
Her phone number is:
(666)555-4444
Her private email address is:
spamme@newspaper.com
And finally, I heard a rumor the other day that she likes to act out stalker/rapist/child-molestoer scenerios with strangers (particularly ex-cons) and likes to lie and say that she isn't enjoying it, or that she doesn't want it, when she really does. That same rumor mentioned that she likes to convince young mothers to abort thier fetuses, and then she takes them home to desicrate all while laughing at the Christian God. She also, supposedly, according to rumor, enjoys pissing on the Koran while masturbating and shouting horrible curses at Mohammed.
I don't know if any of this is true or not, it's just a bunch of rumors, after all, but I'm sure you can ask her yourself and find out.
And that freedom is not guaranteed by Law, but by Slashdot's editors. You post here upon CmdrTaco's sufferance.
The Law says another can't stop you from speaking, not that you can require another to pay for your speech.
You have freedom of speech from your PC because YOU PAY for that access. You OWN your Presses under this analogy. One of the great gifts the Internet gave Freedom of Speech is the reduction of the cost of self-publishing. We're now back to the equivalent of Regency-era pamphleteering, which always was a great example of Freedom of Speech (Much as the prosecution of the Radicals was a warning against government power to restrict speech).
Using the government to hijack another's presses is restriction of speech (Since I also have the right to choose what I shall speak) not an increase.
"You've got an invalid haircut" -Warren Zevon - Life'll Kill Ya
I think this sounds like a nicely balanced law. Not only would it force Microsoft, etc., to post replies, it shouldn't effect sites like Slashdot at all -- you can already reply to anything anyway! While a post from Microsoft might get modded down, it'd be pretty easy to prove that that was an action of the readers, not the site owners, and that the post is still accessible.
....Does not and should not translate automatically into the right to be heard. Any damn fool with a computer and a modem can put up anything he likes on the net. Several billion people would have potential access to it. Now, how are you going to ensure that Joe Sixpack and his wife Oprah's blogs get responded to by every kookburger on the planet? The answer is, you can't.
The answer to bad speech is more good speech, which will rise of its own accord. The truth always does.
I don't get why corporations deserve to have rights. They're entities formed for the sole purpose of massing as many funds as possible. Not a noble ideal that deserves any sort of protection under the law if you ask me.
A good point.
But lets imagine a case where a huge, powerful firm makes claims relating to an individual or small firm.
The individual/small firm probably doesn't HAVE the money, time, or power to reply effectively. Even a lawsuit may not rectify the damages, nor deter the large firm. The damage is already done. But your view on that depends on your view of "survival of the fittest".
To overgeneralize, it seems like a good idea when a big guy beats on a little guy, but a bad idea when a little guy tries to beat on a big guy. The policy isn't just about an individual writing his/her thoughts.
(And although I think its a good idea in theory, I also think that the implementation and enforcement of such a policy would be quite difficult and just result in more lawsuits in reality, as you'd say.)
--- If I had a funny sig too, you might be laughing now.
It sounds nice on the surface but what about situation where a particular person or organization is criticized and the people doing the criticizing don't want to hear any response. Or they do not even want to risk being identified by that person or group.
Do abusive husbands and parents get a right to respond on support group msg boards. Do abusive cult gulag schools get a right to respond to their critics who are so traumatized by the experience of being held against their will for years that they are afraid of being identified and kidnapped by the cult again?
Not to mention that the proposal comes not from the European Union (EU), but from the Council of Europe (CoE), a separate organisation (which has the same flag as the EU to keep things simple ;-) )
The CoE includes 45 countries
(nearly the whole of Europe, including Russia) versus 15 (25 next years) for the EU, and is much, much looser organisation - certainly not a "quasi-governmental body" as claimed by C/Net. Merely a talking-shop and a diplomatic forum.
What do you know about World Politic? Find out in this quiz
You are all forgetting this is not the country of free speech, but the countries of debate. We have simply another view on speech, that is, that unheard speech without debate is like a falling tree in a forest : unheard, noise without sense. We rather have logical, well made debate than free speech. We do not ask you [the US] to like it, or to approve it, we [as citizen] want it so. If every news paper were spitting half assed lies about me, I would like to have the right to make rectification rather than make a libel process or have my own propespect printed out. But I perfectly understand that in a litigious all-over-the-board free speech society you rather have lawyer handle the job.
PS: you did understand that this wasn't about forcing citizen to accept reply from other citizen or forcing their opinion on others, didn't you ? This is about forcing www media outlet to have the same law as newspaper outlet. That is media which have an enormous coverage in comparison to a citizen must allow him the same coverage under certain circumstance , like report of negative info on the former.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
yupp, just like the USA.
--- No, english is not my mother tongue.
Wrong. Anyway, hearing different opinions will help people understanding - listening to the voices that tell what you want to hear will let you stay being "dumb". It's so comfortable not to get confronted with other views, that's correct, indeed.
Islam = rule by elites, the exploitation of the masses, and Allah worship. Example: Saudi Arabia.
Islamism = rule by elites, the exploitation of the masses, the worship of Allah, and suicide bombing. Example: Al Qaeda.
Islamunism = rule by elites, the exploitation of the masses, a religious non-aggression pact, and Jew-hatred. Example: France.
Euroislamunism = The Holocaust Part II. Example: the Europe of the future, unless the ship is righted.
frankly, i don't think it's insightful either, but hey, i didn't moderate it...
so are you arguing that the tiny fraction of people who are marginal enough to be swayed by something they read on the internet is going to in any meaningful way impact a business's sales? b/c i gotta say, someone who's prone to being influenced that easily wasn't exactly a loyal customer to start.
ed
Only if you dissed a public figure.
Like hell.
This doesn't have to be particularly onerous. The "right to reply" could perhaps simply be implemented by pointing to a discussion group on some other server where people can sign in and respond or by putting in a link to the organization being criticized.
In good ol' American entrepreneurial fashion, this need will probably be met by simple, advertising supported "right to reply" sites that you can point to.
In any case, it's just a proposal. Unlike the US, where the Communications Decency Act actually needed to get struck down by judges, it isn't even a law. McCullagh is on some kind of libertarian crusade, and when he isn't out bashing Democrats, he likes to bash Europe even more. My suggestion would be to ignore him--he has nothing of substance to say (and he is welcome to respond to this posting by hitting the "Reply" button below).
What are we talking about, is the right to a reply really a violation of the right of free speech?
I bet the open source community will create a "reply application" for use on websites in less than an a week if necessary.
And I don't get this preoccupation with the (lack of a) First Amendment (in Europe) at all. It might be hard to believe but we really have a free press in Europe, you know!
I dunno, it sounds like a good way to stifle the original speech to me. If some newspaper says something about me (true or not) that I don't want to be heard, suddenly they're responsible for printing my 3000 page reply each time?
Guess how many newspapers would still say things about me after that?
Ah, you admit Arial Sharon is a US government official :-)
Why is the government in the business of regulating speech by private citizens?
It's not regulating speech, it's regulating the soapboxes from which the speeches are made. Because of the easy opportunity for rebuttal, it would actually encourage free speech.
Declan McCullagh's link to the final version of the proposal is broken. I would like to read it. Has anybody else bothered to look for it?
If I libel or slander someone I can expect to show up in court.
With this law I would have to incur this small amount of work even when I'm right and they're wrong. Why should I have to turn over my forum or take my viewers out of my forum just because someone claims to be wronged? [Emphasis added]
Seems better if you can keep it all molehill sized. Just add a "Dissenting opinions" section. I imagine you'd be ok just counting disagreeing opinions in most cases.
So there is no freedom of speech in the US as well (see libal and slander).
The german laws are perhaps slightly harsh, but the germans have very big asses to protect and they are still very sore from a thorough slaping 50 years ago.
Perhaps you dont think the holocaust happened?
I wanted to get that said while it's still possible.
Imagine-- you put a negative ad on TV about a candidate, and the candidate is given the right to repond to your ad on the network, free of charge!
The law would need some kind of "with equivalent visibility" clauses, so you couldn't dump the reply at 3:00 AM when the original ad was at 8:00 PM.
In a public forum like this one that is not even necessary since one can provide rebuttal in a transparent way.
This law simply extends that hability to other, more closed, reporting sites which have less public interaction.
Regarding people being able to reply elsewhere regardless of this law, the fact is you could also reply to an off base story on TV by shouting with your lungs out in the middle of the street.
But would it have the same effect?
No, you're wrong. Free speech entitles you to certain freedoms over your own speech. IT DOES NOT ENTITLE OTHERS TO FORCE YOU TO SAY CERTAIN THINGS, IT DOES NOT GRANT THE FREEDOM TO BE HEARD.
When I say what I want on my blog, that's freedom of speech. When company X says what it wants on my blog, that's a hijacking of my resources.
But there is another kind of evil that we must fear most... and that is the indifference of good men.
I know of people who would cancel subscriptions, or stop buying, magazines or newspapers that printed the responce because they are not interested in a responce.
Most media newspapers and magazines serve a certain community. The community that buys the newspapers or magazines is rarely interested in a responce from the person critised because it will only be viewed as lies or blowing off the original subject.
Most newspapers and magazines are debate grounds. Responces to criticisms so be place in a magazine or newspaper that would support their point of view. If the whole premise of the magazine or newspaper to to debate subjects than fine, but otherwise the responce is just stirring pot.
Why should a newspaper or magazine have to print a responce? If what was said was untrue, then the person can bring a lawsuit against the paper or magazine. Otherwise, the point of view is generally not welcome.
At the next eco-hypocrisy-meeting, count the private jets used to get to the meeting. Should be interesting to see that
I always thought it did, but if they don't think their version of history can withstand scrutiny you have to wonder a little. That's the problem with censoring dumb ideas--it gives them credibility they probably wouldn't have when stated openly.
After browsing some of the comments made here, I think there is a basic flaw in the discussion. To most europeans, free speech is great but it's even better if it can make us create a better world. The purpose of free speech is to *create debate*, so that we together can find the best solutions to problems. Now the problem is that many people are so locked in with their opinions that they are not willing to let others voice theirs - well, that's what the right-to-reply laws addresses. It forces them to at least let the other party say what he wants somewhere close to them.
:-) That would explain why people in other countries often find americans loud. :-)
However, most americans here on slashdot (I assume you are americans, I might be wrong) seem to consider free speech a means in itself, how it is used is of no importance. And in some posts it seems that debate is not even wanted ("free speech does not mean the right to be heard"!).
On another note, this doesn't have to bring anyone's website down. Say I have a popular website where I throw trash at amazon because they treated me wrong in one case. Amazon might want a reply. It doesn't say in the article that amazon could force me to host that reply - it quite clearly states that a link to the reply might be enough. So, something like "get amazon's reply +here+" would be enough. Their website might get downed if a lot of people want to read it (which I doubt, if they came to the website for what I put there).
And about the blogs. The typical situation where the right to reply is used in newspapers in european countries is the same situation where you might get sued in the US. Which do you think scares people off of talking the most - afraid of being sued or afraid of having to post a link to the reply? Now what promotes free speech and what stifles it?
I have a *really* hard time seeing why this is so bad.
"The EU is being built today with some great people too. "
I guess where you live, you've lowered the bar for "great" so low that a couple of french lawyers and bureaucrats now qualify for great.
No, son. Read the Declaration of Independance by Jefferson in 1776. That is a great document. It makes you cry when you read it.
Read the American constitution.
Its so eloquant that it lays out an entire government in less words than today's politicans say in an entire Tuna Canning bill.
You insult the great thinkers when you compare the cloddish fools that you compare to the great ones.
That sound you hear is Voltaire laughing at you for saying such a dumb thing.
[in fact, if Voltaire were alive today, he's probably kill himself to see what France has become]
Well, European regulations on the sharing of private information tend to be stricter than their corresponding American ones. Though quite right, public figures tend to be afforded much more privacy in continental Europe (in the UK, the Sun started a downright spiral when it comes to reporting on the Royal Family)
Michel
Fedora Project Contribut
Well if I do it on slashdot, I'm safe right?
;-)
Would slashdot be responsible for posting up some hate mail?
Would anyone be able to find it?
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
This would turn every paper and magazine into a debate forum. Factual information will get left in a maze of he/she said this or that.
At least in America we have something called the freedom of the press. While there are times that this freedom doesn't apply (such as national security when lives are at stake), a paper or magazine is free to publish what it wants. It doesn't have to print something it doesn't want.
At the same time, these papers and magazines are beholding to their readers and the law. By the law, I mean if a print media prints something about someone that is not true, then that person can bring them to court and seek damages.
While there are times when I enjoy a great debate, I don't want to perpetually sift through the he saids and she saids. I, like many other people, read certain newspapers and magazines and watch certain news shows and channels because we trust them. We don't always have the time to sift through millions of articles and responces to figure out what is true. We leave it up to the reporters to determine this. When a report doesn't do this properly, it will eventually come out because it always does, and at that the news media and the reporter will be hurt by the negative press and this could cost them their jobs.
How would you like it if you had to always read a responce when you read an article? How would like it if Microsoft submitted a responce article for every submission made about them? While you may have the time to consistently read articles and responces, the rest of the world doesn't. Just like database programmers use a where clause to make the database program filter out the unwanted information because they don't always have the time to check each entry individually to find the data, people choose certain news media outlets to filter out the junk they don't care about.
The basic point is that we don't have to be confronted with other points of views if we don't want to be confronted with them. If you want to be, then so be it. You can pick up both types of media (pro and con for you view point) or frequent media that gives you both.
At the next eco-hypocrisy-meeting, count the private jets used to get to the meeting. Should be interesting to see that
"Show me an amendment that grants the right of the original poster of a comment on the internet the right to not have to display a rebuttal?"
I wish I didn't have to do this, as your mom and dad are probably dying with embarassment, but here goes.
Lets start with the 1st Amendment (ironically, an amendment that would not pass in Europe today as it is far too liberal! Imagine that. 225 year old laws that give too much freedom to people):
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."
Read that over at least 3 times. The key part is "abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press".
So lets just work this through logically:
1) Whether you consider a web site "the press" or "speech" is irrelevant. Congress can't abridge that freedom.
2) If congress were to pass a law that says "people have to be able to reply to web pages", it implies there is a penalty for not allowing replies
3) Thus any kind of law that governs "the press" or "speech" in any way isn't allowed. Its unconstitutional.
4) Therefore the law you suggest simply couldn't stand any sort of review by the supreme court.
5) In fact, even people who don't enjoy free speech (aka Republicans and Democrats) aren't dumb enough to suggest something so blatently unconstitutional.
6) So while your heart is pure, you're not particularly well thought out.
You see, the 1st Amendment is probably one of the greatest laws written in the history of government. It allows people to criticize without fear of having to "allow people to reply".
But your idea is fully exposed in the "Marketplace of Ideas", therefore, everybody is free to criticize you.
I know that's hard to accept that there is no guarantee of fairness, but over the long run it has withstood far longer than the young governments that make up continental Europe.
"Maybe you can find something not related to his intelligent post and use that as a rebuttal."
He demolished his piece line by line. There was nothing left of the guy's reasoning.
He ad-hominim'd him at the end, but the guy was already done-for. It was just the cherry at the top of whoop-ass cake on the guy.
Are you getting this? DO I need to draw a picture? He got his ass kicked in a public forum. It was fun to watch.
Actually, no one here disagrees with you. We're just on a not-quite-so-angled downward slide as Europe.
"Has [being a kidnapped teenage girl, raped repeatedly for months] changed you?" - Katie Couric to Elizabeth Smart
Actually, that's not too far from the truth.
Imagine...Slashdot opens an office in Europe. Someone criticizes you over there. They have to publish your link to your response. You respond with http://goatse.cx, and Slashdot legally has to publish a working link because that is a valid response to someone verbally attacking you!
"Has [being a kidnapped teenage girl, raped repeatedly for months] changed you?" - Katie Couric to Elizabeth Smart
..."Quasi-governmental" mean?
Are they an obscure government department that makes recommendations to elected government bodies, or are they just a really big polititcal lobby group that complains a whole lot until they get their way?
The editorial freedom concerning counterstatements should be (and usually is) very limited. The counterstatement has to be published with the same prominence as the original article (same position, same type, etc). The publisher can comment on the counterstatement, but the commentary must not exceed depictions of facts from the publisher's perspective or clarifications of the intended meaning of statements in the original article. Everything else has to be in a separate article. The right of reply still doesn't level the playing field, but it is good enough for many cases which would otherwise end up in front of a judge. [Emphasis added]
If the counterstatement is the ravings of a lunatic, the editor has a few more options. However if the editor comes off as the raving lunatic, (s)he's making the counterstatement seem more legitimate. Even in the absence of laws, it will tend to be somewhat self-policing. In any event it should be effective in keeping minor misunderstandings from escalating into feuds.
I had a British guy try to explain it to me once, but even he didn't know it completely.
In America, it's nice and easy to understand. You have the Federal government, and then the states, all on the same level, and then local governments, all creations of the states.
In Britain, it's different. The UK in the UN is not the same as the UK in the Commonwealth, which is not the same as the UK in the EU. It's like an onion. Peel off one layer, and you lose Isle of Man(n?) Peel off another, and you lose another island. Peel off another, and you lose Scotland. Peel another, and you lose Wales. London government is not a creation of the English Parliament. Police are sort of their own thing left over from antiquity, etc. etc. etc.
I read a book from the '70's that went into this. Technically, Canada must get permission from the English Parliament before any changes to whatever passes for a constitution up there, but needless to say they don't do that in reality.
"Has [being a kidnapped teenage girl, raped repeatedly for months] changed you?" - Katie Couric to Elizabeth Smart
Taken from the original article:
"â Long replies are fine. 'There should be flexibility regarding the length of the reply, since there are (fewer) capacity limits for content than (there are) in off-line media.'"
Scared yet? The potential for abuse is staggering.
Some people have raised free speech concerns as if the U.S. might not do the same things the Europeans have. There are reasons to be suspicious.
The FCC used to have something called the fairness doctrine that applied to TV and radio. A media outlet would have to air all points of view if it aired any point of view on a subject.
The fairness doctrine was upheld by the Supreme Court in the Red Lion case. In that case, the issue was whether a person who thought he had been personally attacked in a broadcast had the right to air his defense on the station. The Supreme Court ruled:
"In view of the scarcity of broadcast frequencies, the Government's role in allocating those frequencies, and the legitimate claims of those unable without governmental assistance to gain access to those frequencies for expression of their views, we hold the regulations and ruling at issue here are both authorized by statute and constitutional."
However, if we take the U.S. Supreme Court at its word in an Internet case, the fairness doctrine might well not be sustained on the Internet. As the Court said in Reno v. ACLU, striking down provisions of the Communications Decency Act of 1996:
"In Southeastern Promotions, Ltd. v. Conrad, 420 U.S. 546, 557 (1975), we observed that "[e]ach medium of expression . . . may present its own problems." Thus, some of our cases have recognized special justifications for regulation of the broadcast media that are not applicable to other speakers, see Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC, 395 U.S. 367 (1969); FCC v. Pacifica Foundation, 438 U.S. 726 (1978). In these cases, the Court relied on the history of extensive government regulation of the broadcast medium, see, e.g., Red Lion, 395 U. S., at 399-400; the scarcity of available frequencies at its inception, see, e.g., Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. v. FCC, 512 U.S. 622, 637-638 (1994); and its "invasive" nature, see Sable Communications of Cal., Inc. v. FCC, 492 U.S. 115, 128 (1989). Those factors are not present in cyberspace."
Given the fact that some broadcasters use cyberspace, e.g. CNN, we can't be sure where our Supreme Court would end up on the freedom of speech issue.
Personally, I hope we don't have to find out.
"Not so. If you do not want the company's reply to be seen, then you are stifling *their* free speech, not the other way round."
This reminds me of the confusion around "free" software. This law says that you have a right to freely (as in "speech") speak about someone so long as you offer the subject free (as in "beer") speech as well. So you're not allowed to complain unless you're willing to pay for your opponent's bandwidth.
This has got to have some interesting effects on political debate...
The individual/small firm probably doesn't HAVE the money, time, or power to reply effectively. Even a lawsuit may not rectify the damages, nor deter the large firm. The damage is already done. But your view on that depends on your view of "survival of the fittest".
It isn't about survival of the fittest. There are already laws against malicious slander and libel. And frankly, in this society, what we need are people smart enough not to take everything at face value.
But the reality still is: I open my mouth, whether I'm a company or a person, and that imposes no obligations on anyone to listen or care. So how can it impose obligations on me to ? If I'm lying, we're supposed to live in a society that ALREADY has a diverse community of criticism to ferret out and publicize lies. People that want information can put effort into looking for it. THAT is the philosophy that democracy is built on, and if it's not working as well as you'd like, THAT is what needs to be fixed.
For every website in Europe that essentially says "America sucks" ...
Force them to post a reply of "No, you suck!"
That'll make them change the law real quick.
To celebrate the occasion of my 1000th post, I will post no more forever on Slashdot. Goodbye.
"Freedom of the press is for those who have one."
I agree with the article's position criticizing this right of reply and wanted to add some additional perspectives that I've not seen posted anywhere.
In the US, the Supreme Court has generally taken the position that the answer to speech is more speech. That is, dialog is self-repairing. (The court has not yet confronted "flaming", and I eagerly await a test of the "more speech" doctrine when an incessant flamer manages to wend his way to the top of the court docket.)
Nevertheless, I think the point is that the reason that libel has traditionally been dealt with more harshly than slander, for example, is that it allows a more limited opportunity for reply. And yet, public figures have, within the US, a higher burden to meet in showing libel--requring a showing of actual malice and not just ill effect. Why? Because public figures are assumed by their nature to be able to command "press time" and to be able to effectively "call a press conference". As such, they are engaged in a visible dialog with the public any time they want and can use speech (rather than lawsuits) to effect redress in most cases, and the court prefers that.
Now, in many Internet venues, anyone can call a press conference. As I have called you readers here to listen to me blather now. We can just "post". And as such, I claim that in this venue, where we all have access to an ability to post, we can all get redress to confusions and offensenses by counterposting. But if this venue were not of that nature, we couldn't.
You might think I'm leading up to saying that therefore everyone should have a right of reply. I don't think that. I think instead that the incentive for adding a right of reply should be that if you deny a right of reply in a venue, the burden of proof for things like libel should be lower because there was not effective means of simple redress offered. If you do offer a right of reply, then the burden of proof for libel should be higher, rewarding you for having made public dialog the chief means of remedying a problem.
In other words, I think that an "incentive-based" forum technology, where those offering right of reply are rewarded legally is a better way to go. That way, the issues of resource and liability and reward will naturally sort themselves out without additional complex mechanism on the matter of reply per se. Rather, an available right of reply should be seen as one kind of evidence that a forum is not seeking to hoodwink anyone; absent that, the burden might be on the forum to show that in some other way.
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
"Of course they don't have the First Amendment. They don't have the Declaration of Independance or the Proclamation of Emancipation, either; the First Amendment is part of the American constitution."
Your new word for today is "analogy". Your homework assignment is to learn its definition and compose five sentences using the word.
"This intentionally emotion-provoking phrase intends to say "they don't have freedom of speech","
IMO (I'm not the original poster), he meant that Europeans don't have "hard" freedom of speech. The US is more or less unique with the wording of its constitution. Most national documents (including and especially western European countries) state that its people have "freedom of speech" but don't say much more than those magic three words, leaving the government to figure out just what they mean (yes, I know I'm cynical, but...). In the US, "Congress shall make no law." If this law were passed in the US verbatim, it would be smacked down by the courts in about three seconds flat (and heads would probably roll during the next election year). Most European democracies have few fundamental laws that restrict their legislatures quite this "severely," so it's more than fair to say that they don't have a "First Amendment."
"This reads like a third-grader's "your momma's so fat" joke; it seems like it's just there to try to make Europe seem bad, without any justifying context."
Metaphor time!
"Tim's momma's so fat, etc etc... And now, according to national law, I must inform you that Tim has presented a signed affidavit from a doctor that his mother is not clinically 'obese.'"
Just imagine the chaos at your average soccer game!
"With the implication that in pursuit of respect for Free Speech,"
"Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech."
"Respect For Small Government,"
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectivley, or to the People."
"the states aren't any better at any of this than their peers in democracy."
If anything, I'd argue that we've at least done a better job of putting these ideals into words and putting them in our fundamental laws.
"College kids don't get their life-savings yanked for producing search engines in free-speech respecting nations."
I'll get flamed for doing this, but he was free to say "no" to the settlement offer.
"why'd you have to ruin it by trying to make America the moral of the story?"
Because he know how much of a resposne it would incite. Duh!
it's pretty zany to imagine that just about every form of online publishing, from full-time news organizations to occasional bloggers to moderated chat rooms, would be covered. But it's no accident. A January 2003 draft envisioned regulating only "professional on-line media." Two months later, a March 2003 draft dropped the word "professional" and intentionally covered all "online media" of any type.
OK, this applies to EU. Would an offense against this be extraditable under the Cybercrime Treaty if someone in EU government was sufficiently offended?
Tech Public Policy stuff
"Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression;"
Interpreted by whom?
"this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference"
Only if you don't consider having to pick up the tab for publishing rebuttals "interference." At the very least, it's debatable.
"and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."
However, it is not reguardless of topic.
"So, it is very wrong to state that EU lacks a "First Amendment""
Point out the phrase "shall make no law" (or its equivalent) in that sentence, and I'll agree with you.
HTTP Error 404
404 Not Found
Tech Public Policy stuff
at the moment, we're nothing more than fellow traders within the eu. i define joining the eu as being under the control of brussels, under a common foreign policy and having no control over interest rates, no control over our own economy, no control over our own justice system, pretty much no control over our own country.
WTF is a sig?
yes it was done by good ppl of the time, but it was done FOR THE PEOPLE. the EU is done FOR POLITICIANS ON THE GRAVY TRAIN!
the eu doesn`t stop wars happening, it not only increases the likelihood of a civil war within the eu, it also increases tensions between the eu and russia, and the eu and america.
war is about 3000 times more likely now with the unification of europe than, say a decade ago.
WTF is a sig?
actually internet communications should be different
cause they ARE different
i cannot stand people who cant change. Im sorry. the internet medium has very very very little to do with any other medium out there.
for fucks sake, look at this site. NOTHING like anything else. And guess what? Just cause I call CNN doesnt mean they have to air my complaint, just cause i write to an editor...
I dont see your point.
A mailing list is like a group discussion, a group meeting. A blogs alittle more open....BUT THE INET IS NEW. Do no apply old standards to it.
thank you
good day
When you've finished stomping your feet, maybe you might explain how and why the Internet is so "different".
Meanwhile, consider this: If I knowingly publish a lie about you in my newspaper, you have recourse to the courts to collect damages and compel me to retract the lie. If I publish the same lie in a media outlet that happens to be a web site, why should you not have recourse to the same rights and legal protections?
By the same token, if a country already has laws about the right to reply, why should people not enjoy the protection of those laws simply because the medium in question is the Internet?
The Internet isn't all that new, but even if it was created yesterday it's newness wouldn't absolve the people using it of responsibility for their words.
If you don't want to be held accountable for your words, don't put them on the Internet for everyone to read. When you put your words on an Internet site, that's publishing. If you want it to be private communications, send an email.
And, by the way, Slashdot is nothing special. Just a few people picking news items written by other people, posting them somewhere, and inviting comment. It's an old idea and it predates the Internet.
Again, the technology is not relevant. It's the words that count.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
...they're not even reading the blogs they would have the right of response to. So the point is thoroughly moot.
Increasing the amount of speech does not increase the freedom of speech. In a broadcast medium there is reason to enforce fair play and have feedback rules, as the message spread by the medium can have an effective monopoly over an audience. If the only local news show slanders Bob Jones regularly, how is Bob to defend himself?
The internet is different. Bob can afford to put up his own web site as a counter. Web sites probably don't have effective monopolies because they are pulled content, not pushed. The audience in general seeks a variety of opinions. The multitude of voices on the internet delivers.
To control the manner in which you can speak and present your opinions is, at face value, stifling the freedom of your speech. This rule about mandatory talk back does not belong on the internet at this time. Hopefully it will never belong, as that will be admitting that the entire internet has gone corporate and that individuals, once again, don't have a voice. -theed
I was under the impression they were talking about free speech and not freedom of the press.
So why the fsck should this be different on the net then in the printed press?
Because printed press is a one-to-many form of communication--few people owned printing presses, so if someone uses their's against you, you might not be able to respond unless they were required to print your response.
That's simply not true on the Internet--a many-to-many medium--everyone can get their own silly web page and respond to their heart's conent. There's simply no utilitarian reason for the old rule to apply here.
The simple fact is that no government has the financial resources to police the internet the same way they do newspapers--which either means the new law will be (at best) underenforced, or (at worst) enforced by companies mailing cease and desist letters to harrass everyone. I'm sorry to break it to you, but in real life the rules don't always fscking scale up. When the power of publishing is only enjoyed by a few, obviously different regulations are necessary and possible than when this power is enjoyed by everyone.
Some of you seem to forget that targets need not to make use of that right all the time.
The fact is that Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms just expresses things more realistically in relation to the requirements for a civil society. The 1st Amendment may sound absolute but it simply isn't in reality.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
So now there is now an obligation on the diverse community to seek out lies and publish them... why not make it the obligation of the publisher to fix his/her errors in truth when pointed out?
Why is it that we have to expect newspapers, TV media, radio, and such to report a reply, but we can't expect that from other publication sources that are just as publically available with current technology? Blogs and personal websites are just as accessable as MSNBC these days.
Like this crap.
"Freedom of the press is for those who have one."
And now with the internet, a homeless guy can go into his local library, log on to the internet, sign up for a free webpage/blog, and he could wind up with the #1 google link on any given subject.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Besides, a corporation doesn't have the same rights to speach as an individual
No, not in Europe. In the US, though, corporations have standing in court. They are recognised as a person. Since roughly the 1890s. As such, they have the same right to free speech as the wannabe communist down the road. Difference is, the corporation has money.
A blogger is NOT a newspaper with a large fulltime staff.
Ethics is what you say you do. Morals is what you actually do.
Wow. If he can do it for 'sex', 'gambling', 'dating' or 'travel' then I want to meet (& hire) this guy ;>
A Prayer to the Omnipotent FSM
So what? The USA in its history has permitted the most egregious abuses of constitutional intent by selective reading and enforcement of constitutional scripture (thinking slavery, McCarthy, etc). Any rights conferring document is only as good as the level to which the state abides.
I have read the convention, and various acts which enshrine the provisions into law. The central point from the article was the implication that Europe's lack of an absolutely phrased First Amendment means that European governments and people are less "free" than their American counterparts.
European society is different from American society. Not inferior, just different. The relationship between the state and the people is of a different character to those in the USA (government is more active on behalf of the people than would be acceptable in the USA - you would probably say government interferes more with the people). What comes over as bureaucratic bullshit to you may come over as sensibly phrased compromise to us. Beware nations divided by a common language!
Hence my point. There is no One True Construction of Liberty. Liberty is a construction of rights and freedoms deriving inherently from the condition and history of a people as a whole. Therefore, a different history, with different pressures, and different results will produce a different construction. While comparison between similar states is valid and desirable, absolute ranking is rarely profitable. Does this make judgement impossible? Hell, no - it just makes it trickier. But diversity and complexity make the world interesting.
--Ng
"The more numerous the laws, the more tyrannical the government."
Bullshit. Merely being available to the public does not obligate the public to partake of the media in question. No one is forced to read a newspaper or to read a blog. No one should be forced to pay to publicize opinions he is opposed to. Government attempts to do so are nothing short of tryanny under the smiling mask of do-gooder "human rights" and other bullshit ideological tools of "soft" totalitarians.
What are you, stupid? Nothing today protects web content from libel or slander laws. Committing libel on a website has the same results as in traditional print media.
Stop confounding libel laws with these stupid, totalitarian attempts to force people to publish views they disagree with. That has nothing at all to do with libel law.
Get that through your thick head, you freaking moron. Moronic, socialist control freak.
You sheep are responsible for putting this totalitarian monster of big government into control over every aspect of society.
Baaa-baaaa! I hope you like your "fairness" and equality when you are marching off to the gulags.
Either we have free speach and free press, or we do not. Any state that forces you to publish against your will, in your own publication, views you find offensive, is a tyrannical state, no matter how slickly it poses as the defender of "human rights" and "equality". Equality is the death knell of freedom; the thin edge of the wedge and all-purpose tool of incipient totalitarianism.
All this proposed law does is stifle free speach on the internet and hand yet more power over to faceless and unelected bureaucrats, judges, and lawyers.
No, you are the stupidest ever.
If you do not want the company's reply to be seen, then you are stifling *their* free speech, not the other way round.
That makes perfect sense when you apply it to newspapers. They are incapable of replying on their own unless they have a newspaper of their own. Since a newspaper is a speaker in a priviledged position they must provied that privilege to others. It is easy for a newspaper with a fulltime staff of dozens and a legal department to comply.
It is a mess to try to apply it to an individual blogger. It is an unreasonable burden on an individual, and everyone already has the exact same ability to put up their own blog. You are not denied the right to reply and their is no justification to place a burden on the first person to supply it for you.
On the internet the main use of this will be corporations with legal departments using it to place the burden on individuals. That is the exact opposite of the original intent.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Freedom of speech is the right to say whatever you think. Not if that "free speech" is unjustly damaging another person or business. Total freedom of speech into the extreme without any consequences for those who speak is nothing short of anarchy. Americans are always so proud of their version of "free speech", not realizing that they are in fact bound to a whole other set of limitations, especially after 9/11.
+++ATH0
This is why I like Wikipedia, because it's a general information site where everyone has the right to reply. Everyone has a chance to have a say and we all strive to present each others views fairly. I'd love for everything I was reading to have the right to reply and it's one of the reasons why I love blogs so much!
This could also be restated as the requirement not to censor the opinions of others. If you see an article that has false information, do you want the owner of that to be able to censor your reply? Even if you publish it somewhere else, most of the original readers won't see it. This is not what I consider free speech.
WikiCreole - a common wiki markup language
So you say, that a victim of libel should not have the right to fight back, just because *you* think that the victim has lost it's reputation anyway? hmmm...not a really strong argument :-) :-)
The last paragraph is just the usual Europe bashing that you love so much. Not really insightful
Surely the reason Europe lacks a first amendment is that we got it right the first time around
The author of this post asserts his moral rights.
No. The fellow who said something unkind on the Internet has the right to post it on his OWN web page. At present, the slandered party must find another web page. They are NOT allowed by the mighty WebMasters to post on the same page that slandered them, so they have less freedom of speech. They have to find another forum. This is rather like using a megaphone at a cocktail party. The mighty WebMasters demand the right to censor other contributions by exclusion. What this law is about is making the Internet public property, not the private domain of the mighty WebMasters, who expect to say what they want, in public and one way (i.e. without allowing the other party to respond in the same forum).
I stole this
The other guy was a jerk, but he's right... no one can answer his question.
Free speech isn't fair speech. But its okay. You're okay in your cocoon. Its okay. There there. Relax. Its going to be okay.
then you are dumb, ppl are certainly aware, and they're scared. losing your national identity may be fine for most european countries, all of which have been nothing but a pain in the arse the last 1,000 years, but the latest polls - the guardian - 81% do NOT want to have the euro, sky news - 98% said NO to the euro - these are amazing statistics.
there is NO need for the euro, back in the 70s we agreed upon a free-trade agreement with the rest of europe - not to be ruled by it. it's completely stupid, monetary union before political union will not work. look at europe's overall economy now it's a fucking joke.
oww euro has managed to stay out of the red for 2 weeks for the first time ever well done new super currency. that's only because of the low dollar not the strong euro.
you go play nice in your little europe then call us when u need help sorting yourselves out again, maybe we'll bail you all out again, maybe we won't.
WTF is a sig?
So, I guess that means you're OK with me writing lies about you and posting them to a weblog and any other Internet site I can access? And that you'd be OK with a system that prohibited you from taking any legal action against me, even if those lies got you fired, effectively keep you from being working in your profession, and cost you your house?
Your point that no one is forced to read something is irrelevant. The point is knowingly publishing lies about someone is illegal. You seem to want to give Internet publishers free rein to avoid responsibility for publishing libel and slander.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Nice litany of insults. Have you noticed, yet, that poeple ignore what you say?
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
I think people in the US would argue YOU DON'T HAVE IT. If people can tell you what to say, you are not free.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
No, they do not in the US. A corporation MUST attempt to be factual at all times. They are also limited in what they can say in regards to financial disclosure, future plans, legal action, etc. Basically to prevent insider trading or stock price speculation.
Yes, even if that speach is damaging to another. The only exception to that is if a person is attempting to knowing slander someone. In court, they call this proving "Malice". In defense of my arguement, I present the KKK. These dweebs are free to say whatever they please and the government can't do a damn thing about it.
I was wrong in claiming the recommendation only applied to 'professional on-line media', as the following bit from the article shows:
It's pretty zany to imagine that just about every form of online publishing, from full-time news organizations to occasional bloggers to moderated chat rooms, would be covered. But it's no accident. A January 2003 draft envisioned regulating only "professional on-line media." Two months later, a March 2003 draft dropped the word "professional" and intentionally covered all "online media" of any type.
Of course. I have in fact tried, but the links in both the original article and your reply here give me 404 errors; in lieu of reading it, I went by what the article stated.
I don't know; does it? It didn't sound as though it would from what I was able to read; you tell me...
At any rate, I was speaking in a more general sense about whether anyone who offered criticism in any medium should be obligated to provide access to a rebuttal by the target of said criticism. Specific provisions of the draft that address concerns are good and all, but I was asking whether this kind of thing is a good idea as a general rule.
Sorry to stick my nose in, but there are existing legal mechanisms for this, that is, I do have legal redress, and have had for hundreds of years, even before the Internet existed. They're called libel and slander laws, which are adjudicated in civil court. If someone damages my credibility on the web, I would set up my own redress on the web. If that redress does not adequately recover my credibility, then I evaluate the damage done by the defamation, then sue them for those damages and perhaps a punitive sum, I think. IANAL.
He was a verray parfit gentil knight.
Despots will love this law. That means, that an Iraninan blogger, who posts items against their represive Theocratic state, would have to be forced to post government propaganda.
What a dumb idea.
- sigs are for wimps.
Tried it again, yes, still works fine for me. What I was pointing to was the discussion document. With their suggestions. None of which is necessarily going to be made law. But the relevant bit to the duration of the reply is -
17. One expert thought that the requirement that the reply should be available for at least 24 hours was not flexible enough. The publisher might have to take down the reply before 24 hours had passed, for example due to its defamatory nature. Another expert suggested that the reply should be offered for as long as the person or entity affected so demanded, but at the most for one month.
That does not appear to be the same as 'one month plus the length of time the original was there' to me.
And boy, am I glad I live in a country where something like the KKK could never happen :)
This law (that, again, has been in effect since 1974) is a good thing. It protects the individual from large corporations. So some large newsoutlets won't be able to attack a person without at least printing the other side of the story. Big deal.
+++ATH0
Nor to me, either; where'd you get "one month plus"? I said only "a period of time at least equal to the duration of the original criticism and at least 24 hours," which I think accurately paraphrases the first item listed in the article's "excerpts from its proposal":
"The reply should be made publicly available in a prominent place for a period of time (that) is at least equal to the period of time during which the contested information was publicly available, but, in any case, no less than for 24 hours."
I didn't say anything about the original time plus an additional month. I just mentioned having the reply for the same time as the original critical work, which is what the article cites as a proposal.
I can use the link now, though.
If the company wants to respond, they can do so on their website. They shouldn't be able to control what I post on mine, any more than I should have a right to decide what they post on theirs.
This is designed to keep your average joe from being able to post what he believes.
If a newspaper, TV station, or radio station say something about a company/individual that that individual doesn't like, he can't force them to print/broadcast his side of the story. The rest of us shouldn't be forced to do it either.
Free speech isn't free speech if someone else gets to decide what you must post.
No. The fellow who said something unkind on the Internet has the right to post it on his OWN web page. At present, the slandered party must find another web page. They are NOT allowed by the mighty WebMasters to post on the same page that slandered them, so they have less freedom of speech. They have to find another forum. This is rather like using a megaphone at a cocktail party. The mighty WebMasters demand the right to censor other contributions by exclusion. What this law is about is making the Internet public property, not the private domain of the mighty WebMasters, who expect to say what they want, in public and one way (i.e. without allowing the other party to respond in the same forum).
Look man, get your terms straight first. SLANDER is a deliberately false statement made with malicious intent to do harm to another's reputation; it is done VERBALLY. LIBEL is the printed version of SLANDER, and since we're talking about the World Wide Web here, LIBEL is the term you should use, not SLANDER. LIBEL is an actionable crime under the law, whether in the US or in Germany. If someone has been libeled, they take the libelous party to court. Here is a legal definition of libel with some examples. I'm sure Google can help you find more.
So now that we've gotten LIBEL out of the way, that leaves the rest of the objectionable bits, which essentially amount to you not being able to deal with other people's exercise of free speech. Free speech is the right to speak your mind; this right is not abridged by consideration of others. In a free society, you have to deal with the fact that not everyone is going to say things that please you. In no way is free speech constituted so that you can only say what you like if you repeat others' objections to your opinion. Bear in mind that we are not talking about news organizations here, we are talking about people's own web pages and blogs.
And that's just on principle. Then there are the practical nightmares of trying to enforce this law effectively on the general population.
Finally... "the mighty WebMasters?" WTF is that, some kind of comic book villain? Despair, mortals! The WebMaster is come to destroy you! Bwahahaha! Seriously, a web master is just a name for a guy who updates and administers a web page. In the case of someone's blog or personal web page, that's the owner. So do you think people should no longer have rights over their own web pages?
I know this because Tyler knows this.
With respect, the first non-legal definition I found in google says that slander is âa false and malicious statement or report about someoneâ(TM) so I rest my case on that. I agree that (in pre-internet days) there was a concrete difference between slander and libel, but the multi-media oriented Internet will erase this distinction in time. In fact, it is the real-time nature of the Internet that makes it more like having a conversation than reading a newspaper. This in turn makes it reasonable to accept rebuttals, as you would in a discussion over a pint in the pub. What I mean to say, in a nutshell, is that traditional âWebMasterâ(TM) style users treated the Internet like a Newspaper and barred rebuttals, at least as far as they could on their own sites. This law will encourage the use of the Internet as a consensus driven conversational tool, rather than as a mouthpiece for crackpots. It will allow feedback, which is necessary for any system to work.
I stole this
More none-legal definitions of slander. Suggest we invent a new term for multimedia, such as slibelled, or landered or some such word. 2: the act of defaming [syn: aspersion, calumny, defamation] v : charge falsely or with malicious intent; attack the good name and reputation of someone; "The journalists have defamed me!" The article in the paper sullied my reputation" [syn: defame, smirch, asperse, denigrate, calumniate, smear, sully, besmirch]
I stole this
So now there is now an obligation on the diverse community to seek out lies and publish them...
No, there is no obligation on anyone. IF people want to seek out the truth, they can do so.
why not make it the obligation of the publisher to fix his/her errors in truth when pointed out?
First of all, this legislation has nothing to do with truth, just criticism. But second of all, even if the publisher does make errors: so what? Even if they are lying through their teeth, lying is not against the law unless its fraud or libel or some other attempt to defraud or do material harm.
You are trying to prove awareness by quoting that 80-so % of the people aware think this and that - nice!
On a different point:
For a nation boasting a 1000 years of proud history, you seem to have a stunningly short memory.
In all that time, you really only bailed us out once (and don't try to compare Napoleon and Willhelm with Hitler, that's just ignorant), and you have yet to bail "us" out of something you weren't part in starting yourself...
Ethics is what you say you do. Morals is what you actually do.
[NT]
USA press free? Now that deserves a +5 Funny.