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.
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
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
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.
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
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
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]
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
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...
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.
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
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
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.
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"
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 ....
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.
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
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 ;)).
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.
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.