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Europe, Free Speech, And The Internet
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.
Of course, that's mostly useful in non-litigatious countries (;-))
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
It seems like big business will just use this as a way to stamp out or obscure dissent. Every blogger that makes a negative comment about the music industry will have to post RIAA propaganda on their webpage, for free.
There's a part of me that's entertained by how exploitable the system would be:
1) Goad someone in to mentioning you on their website.
2) Demand right of reply.
3) Just like politicians never reply to the actual question, nor do you.
Now you get someone else to pay all of your hosting costs for you.
Imagine Petsmart, "PetCo has described themselves as the best pet store in the country. We demand the right of redress to fill their site with advertising for our own store."
Every time Microsoft posted anything about Linux, the open source community would get granted rebuttal space on Microsoft's own web servers.
Not only that but who gets the right of reply? Linus? Every contributor to Linux? Anyone who's ever reported a Mozilla bug?
Then there're the counter exploits: Refuse until they take you to court. Continue refusing until the day before the court date. Then post the rebuttal on the same page as the now two-years out of date story.
The reality is it's totally unenforcable. Sit back, rather than get worked up over it, let them try it and watch it fall to pieces around them.
As I stated in response to the original posting on this topic, I don't see this as chilling. In fact, I see this as encouraging and supporting dialog. This is no different from the old FCC rules, no longer with us, that required TV and radio stations to air responses to editorials.
In looking at something like this we have to balance the burden of the requirement against the public benefit of it being in place.
So, what is burden? Well, you would have to have a "letters to the editor" place in your web site, blog, or ezine. From a human factors point of view, you should have an indicator that would call out that a piece has a response to it. In terms of system building and design, this would be trival to add to blogs and web sites.
What is the benefit? Well, when reading a piece, you get to see the "other side of the story" from the person, persons, or organization which are the subject of the piece.
From my point of view the minimal burden coupled with the benefit of getting a more complete picture of a situation only equals goodness.
This brings me to my final point: how, why do people see this as chilling? When has dialog ever been chilling. I believe it was Benjamin Franklin who is reported to have said, "Freedom of the Press belongs to those that own printing presses." Yes, the cost of entry for publishing the internet has dropped. But in some ways the cost of attention has gone up. If you write something about me, I can go and setup a blog and write a response, but I have no way to insure that your audience has the opportunity to see my response. This proposal would give me the opportunity to get my story out. If you are going to call me out by name, shouldn't I - in the sense of fairness - have the opportunity to let put out my story and for folks to know it is there? To have a chance that they will see it and chose to read it?