Slashdot Mirror
Digging For Truth Online Is Up To You
An anonymous reader writes "Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has released the second annual report on obstacles to the free flow of information online. Vint Cerf wrote the forward, where he argues it is the responsibility of every citizen to test the truth of information on the Web, and draw attention to incorrect information, rather than the government's responsibility to dictate the 'truth.' ZDNet Australia has an article on the report."
Interestingly, the German geovernment tries to implement legislation that would require/force anybody who writes about a company or a person on the internet to publish a corrcection/opposing view from that company/person. If one would not agree to do that, one could be charged and fined or jailed. The government wants to implement the same rules that govern the professional print media to each and every internet post of a private citizen, including all the sanctions associated with a possible "breach". This could potentially result in web spiders looking for e.g. the name SCO, and force each and every slashdot poster to publish a correction. It would bring the internet and any discussoin to a crawl.
The scary thing is that this isn't even something that just started after 9.11, when suddenly the whole press acted like not backing the President was a sin. Back in early 2001 I would read the cnn articles about a Bush speech just as they went up online (I guess before a senior editor got their hands on them or something) and they'd include rather shockingly blunt quotes by Bush on religion. (Always made me think that Bush's keepers must have been pretty angry that he couldn't stick to his speeches. I couldn't imagine a speech writer throwing around talk about God and crusades so liberally.) Check again 2 hours later, the quotes had been edited to remove the most inflamatory parts or replaced by a 'summary' of the speech without any excerpts. Ever since then my remaining trust of cnn's impartiality was gone.