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)."
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.
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
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 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?
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.
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.
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
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
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
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.
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
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?
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.
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.
"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
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.