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)."
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
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
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.
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
The response is supposed to be in the same format as the original. So if you wrote something then they should reply with writing. Furthermore you will not necessarily be forced to host their file. The proposal explicitly states, that links will be acceptable. So if someone decides to reply to you in form of a film you can tell them to host it themselves and just post the link. Same for audio. I can't think of any other form that would result in an extremely large file.
Hank! White!
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...
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
If I had mod points at the moment, I'd waste them all on your post. :)
;)) want to do what they want in a consequence-free environment.
I agree, this is probably the biggest reason why people are against it. "It will stifle free speech", they say, because "it will keep people from posting what they really feel if they have to deal with the consequences."
Exactly. You have to deal with the consequences. People in today's society (well, at least the U.S. for you foreign devils out there
"Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised."
-Marilyn Manson
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"
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 ....
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)
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?
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
I'm half/half North American/European and lived half my life in each continent so I see how things work on both sides of the Atlantic.
Right of reply is the most constitutional and democratic thing ever! I'll tell you why Reagan said it didn't promote free speech.
He started out in the media industry : radio host and actor. His friends in the media would say whatever pleased him to get him elected in return of favors like politcal protection.
Bush and his CNN/Foxnews friends certainly played the Americans latel. All forms of democratic dialogue was quelled by the Bush administration and their media friends.
Outside the US we've heard Rumsfeld has ties with Halliburton (even gets a few millions every couple years) and Bush in oil and media. We also heard the facts regarding Bush's grandaddy and the Nazi family ties. We also heard about the forged documents the Bush administration came up with way before it even made news in the US (I heard about it two days after the US had given it to UNMOVIC).
People in the US are blatently disinformed and laws like ROR are only meant to stop misinformation from happening.
When you have corruption (ala Microsoft and SCO) Slashdot gives the ROR to the people and that is why it is so popular. Actually the papers in France (there are a ton just in Paris) love the ROR on editorials. Their sales go up whenever they have a reply in one of their papers. They make more sales because people love listening to a dialogue rather than a mind numbing CNN/Foxnews.
In most European countries the head of state often goes on TV to talk to people and often live. They answer questions from the public and sometimes have to admit their own fallacies.
Has anyone seen Bush accept a challenge from the people? The only interviews he had were as close as rigged as you could have. He has all his answers readied for the prepared question we ask him. This is not dialogue, this is organized monologue.
ROR is for you the people.