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Europe, Free Speech, And The Internet

Posted by timothy on from the never-enough-busybodies dept.

drdale writes "Declan McCullagh responds at CNET.com to a proposal by the Council of Europe to require Internet sites to publish replies by individuals whom the sites criticize. This would apply to all web sites, apparently, including blogs. Per McCullagh, the Council's proposals do not have the force of law, but often serve as the basis for new laws." Imagine the chilling effect if McCullagh's own politechbot and similar sites had to follow such rules.

13 of 341 comments (clear)

  1. Seen it in action... by mgcsinc · · Score: 5, Insightful


    I commented this late in the very-similar post from the other day, but I figured it was worth it again, now that this is recieving more attention.

    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.

  2. Why chilling? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why would this have a chilling effect? It just ensures the powerfull and rich people can't bash and blaim poor people, without giving them a chance to defend themselve. Journalists have way too much power, and that power should be regulated so it isn't abused.

  3. I think the US doesn't get it! by xutopia · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Politicians and media in the US live in a free haven from public backlash. Europeans don't want the same to happen to them.

    Compagnies like Microsoft can bash linux as a file server or Java as a viable programming language and Sun and the OSS community can't do anything about it. With laws like these the truth can come out. It is a law of fairness. Not just the rich media have a voice anymore.

    I'd love to see such fairness happen in North America.

    1. Re:I think the US doesn't get it! by nate1138 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You may have a point, but it isn't worth the sacrifice. In the US, free speech is our most treasured right. ANY attempt to restrain it will not be tolerated. Sure, companies are free to spread FUD, bash each other's products, etc. But If you don't think this happens EVERYWHERE that capitalism is permitted, you are a fool. What makes you think that the published response will be "truth"? If you rely on the media to make your decisions for you, you need to start paying more attention.

      --
      Where's my lobbyist? Right here.
    2. Re:I think the US doesn't get it! by poot_rootbeer · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Politicians and media in the US live in a free haven from public backlash.

      Tell this to Trent Lott and Howell Raines.

  4. That's a good thing! by Fefe · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This is already law for newspapers, and why would internet sites be held to a lesser standard?

    And what is the alternative? Facing countless lawsuits? I think it would be less easy to sue someone if he already had to publish your clarification.

    And it doesn't say you would have to delete your original or that you can't make sure everyone understands you were forced by law to publish the "clarification" and you still stand by your original report.

    1. Re:That's a good thing! by reverse+flow+reactor · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I agree. What are you afraid of? A healthy debate? This law should do nothing to prevent people from publish what they already are. What it will do is force them to do a little more research about what they are writing.

      If you are writing well researched material, then your opponent must reply in kind. If you are writing unresearched, knee-jerking, reactionary garbage and didn't set your facts right, then maybe you have something to worry about.

      Think of it this way: What if Microsoft wrote a terrible review of a Linux filesystem with obvious errors. The right of reply would allow the coder responsible to send in a reply that said "actually, we do have that feature. It is in the code, lines 789-1245. It works. It has worked for several years now, and we have a mailing list full of responses to prove it." This is good.

      What this law does (or what it intends to do, and I hope that the law is not bent to other purposes) is level the playing field. Microsoft can try and publish a slander paper on Red Hat, but Red Hat can refute the charges just like Microsoft can refute something that Red Hat says about Microsoft.

      What this forces people to write more about the strengths of the idea that they are proposing and less about the weaknesses of someone else's idea. It is easy to be a critic. It takes a lot more thought to come up with a better idea. But better ideas change the word and negative comments take it nowhere.

      The right of reply can be very good. Far too many stories are one-sided. Some of the best journalism I have ever read involved a newspaper committing half of a page to one side of an issue and the other half to the opposite issue. That format forced the reading to really THINK about the issue.

      Please reply with your well-researched and insightful comments. They may be contrary to mine, but if they are insightful, then I am listening.

      --

      The significant problems we face cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them. -Einstein

  5. Right of reply to a reply? by jdunlevy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So if somebody has a web site that offends another person, that person gets to have his reply posted for a period on the web site. What, though, if the reply offends some third party? Does the third party get to have his reply to the reply posted on the original web site? What about a reply to that?

  6. If you outlaw comments... by tbase · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...only outlaws will make comments.

    I can understand maybe if you're trying to come across as an "unbiased" news site, but to make even personal and overtly editorial sites comply with this would just be silly.

    If they have to do it, they should make the responder host his own comments, and at the most make the original article include a link to the response. And even then, only for certain sites. To have to post the response on your own site it too much burden and would severely stiffle freedom of expression.

    And if I posted an article on how great Linux is, would I have to give space to Microsoft for a rebuttal?

    --

    666-607: 6th floor apartment of the beast
  7. I think it's a good idea by doublem · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Read the article and the draft. It looks like this would only apply to businesses. This would guarantee Joe Sixpack the right to respond to the European equivalent of CNN.com and have that reply posted.

    I'm not concerned about this law, as I'm interested in letting people see the replies I get to anything I put online. Simply allowing comments on the article would take care of this.

    I don't see it as chilling, especially since it only has to be there for 24 hours and you can just link to it.

    It requires you to add a "Replies to our stories" link on your news site. Boo Hoo.

    Hell, I can see this becoming a new source of revenue for geeks. Take blog software, make some cosmetic changes and market it as a "response administration system."

    Authenticating the source of the replies could be handled by a login process, and news sites could automate the process of inserting a link to the "replies" section a hundred different ways.

    I'm not worried. If people want to make fools of themselves by disagreeing with me, let them. Half the time the arguments against me just strengthen my point.

    --
    "Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
  8. imagine the chilling effect... by 73939133 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Imagine the chilling effect if companies can sue your for billions of dollars in damages if you say something bad about their trademark. All it might take is a single letter to scare you into taking down your entire web site. Of course, we already have that in the US.

    The European proposal seems to amount to "if you are a news site (commercial or non-commercial), you have to put in a link to the person/company you write about if they ask you to". I fail to see the "chilling effect" in that. It seems to be a matter of simple journalistic ethics to do that anyway.

    If we could eliminate product libel and many forms of trademark infringement lawsuits that have cropped up around web sites through such a simple requirement in the US, I think we should adopt it, too: it would seem to be a great way of ensuring that people can exercise their right to free speech without fear of being sued out of everything they own.

  9. Meaning of equality by panurge · · Score: 3, Insightful

    In the French Revolutionary phrase "liberty, equality and fraternity", the equality means equal under the law. At the moment in most developed countries the rich, or those with media access, are a lot more equal than everybody else. Even if there are flaws in the proposed legislation, it does seek to address an inequity in free speech, which is that the rich, or the media-savvy, can make their free speech heard while the poor cannot. When the US Constitution was written, the range of most people's free speech was the size of the town square. Its drafters didn't imagine a world in which a lie could be spread everywhere in just a few minutes.

    --
    Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
  10. Re:Internet should be the cure, not the disease by Doctor+Hu · · Score: 4, Insightful
    This legislation is really silly. Even if this was ever needed in the past it was because the cost of publishing was a barrier to entry, so if a newspaper slagged you the cost to refute them would be too high to ever get your voice heard. However the beauty of internet is that the cost of entry is almost non-existent. After all, I'm spouting my opinions right here and now and it didn't cost me a penny.
    You've correctly identified the reason that right-to-reply has been mandated in quite a few nations in Europe: to provide a balance against negative commentary in major media outlets which the individuals or organisations affected would otherwise not have the resources to obtain. The Internet doesn't invalidate this concept. As you correctly say, we are currently spouting our opinions right here. You may want to consider the likelihood that doing so would be likely to change the opinion of Joe Sixpack about us if he were to read an op-ed piece in <insert name of your most influencial gutter-press imprint> asserting that we're terrorists/ unamericans/ liberals/ whatever.

    The point about right of reply in this context is that it gets to the same people who saw the original piece.

    Unless the legislation is written truely clumsily, it shouldn't be a big problem. Or unless you're under US jurisdiction - but then, as Mark Twain once commented in another context, I repeat myself.