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Greek Blog Aggregator Arrested
arcanumas writes to tell us that Greek authorities have raided the house of Antonis Tsipropoulos, administrator of the blog aggregation site Blogme.gr. His hard drive was seized and he was arrested. The impetus was a satiric website, not named in the stories, that apparently offended a Greek public figure (also unnamed). The site in question was not hosted by Tsipropoulos but was merely linked to by his RSS fed. From the first article: "The developing story coincides with the Internet Governance Forum being hosted in Athens this week, to be attended by Internet luminaries, entrepreneurs, and activists like Vint Cerf, Bob Kahn, and Joi Ito and featuring panels on Openness and Freedom of Expression."
The big boys don't like to look bad.
Fallout 3 will suck.
It is clear that the individual who persecutes a man, his brother, because he is not of the same opinion, is a monster. - Voltaire
Seems to be a monster in the Greek government. I would love to hear some of the luminaries at the conference discuss this and embaress the Greek govenment publicly.
The lima beans had their chance, they fucked it up.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
Maybe it's time to start using I2P or similar?
Qualitas edurus commercium, nullus penitus net rimor, nullus deus beneficium
Then why was his home hard drive confiscated and not the site drive?
Other than that, I can't get any deeper cos I don't understand any of it - its all greek to me.
liqbase
If find this link in the main story to be just as alarming or worse: Swedish programmer in Greek spam probe protests innocence
The Greek police will arrest you on suspicion of spamming. Given the coincidence they have followed as "reasonable grounds" it would seem anyone that gets a virus or trojan that might scan your address book is in jeopardy if they visit Greece. This is just crazy.
Letter To Iran
The Greek government is not particularly known for its respect of people's rights. Just ask them if they have any minorities in their country, and how many Greek minorities there are in other countries bordering Greece.
Could be this one: http://funel.blogspot.com/l os
Also, the wikipedia entry on Dimosthenis Liakopoulos is very entertaining: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimosthenis_Liakopou
Gee, it's too bad Condoleeza Rice didn't turn the Internet over to the UN, like you guys all wanted...
I know sometimes it's hard for us living in the US to remember that our case of (mostly) free speech is not common in other parts of the world.
Even Great Britain has no guarantee of free speech, per se.
Now, if only we could start spreading that around the world instead of spreading DemocracyTM, real democracy might ensue.
Message contains 1 attachment: spam.gif
Lance at Saskblogs has a nice little disclaimer:
Oh You POS
My god.. I read that GEEK Authorities.. :P
How is this illegal?
I still find it ironic that I get a lot of trash talk about how "unfree" speech is the US, yet I see US policitians call each other worse stuff during any election cycle, and no one goes to jail. Just as you can't have a pro-nazi site in Germany, and a host of other restrictions in every other country.
We have our own problems here in the States, (ie: 2600 getting sued for linking to DeCSS code...) but at least pretty much anything goes when it comes to politicians.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
Blogs?
..it's really hard to say if you are being sarcastic. Considering what has been happening in the US lately... and the fact that Greece is the birth place of democracy... and then the twist at the end..... *head explodes*
the name of the suitor is Dimosthenis Liakopoulos, a well-known tv-bookseller and demagogue in Greece, who also "happens" to belong to the ultra-right wing in Greece I'm Greek, and i got to say I find myself being ashamed one more time, after the "Greece bans Videogames" thingie
----
Did anyone else read this as "Geek Blog" instead of "Greek Blog"?
"Everything worth innovating today will go to court tomorrow."
IS free speech. This is where it starts. ( and remember, that we here in the US dont have a democracy.. never really have.. we have a Representative Republic. However, free speech is still its cornerstone.
.. thus the 2nd amendment... This is the mortar that holds the stone of free speech together.
Thus the reason for the first amendment.
After that, you have to be able to stand up and fght for your rights
---- Booth was a patriot ----
a satellite and host all those "Too hot to handle sites". It would be great having the first public site where anybody in the world can post their thoughts without fear of the jack booted govs throwing them in jail.
"Alpha Alpha Alpha!"
have to admit i had to wait for Slashdot in order to learn about this... and i live in the same city as the one that most probably is behind this frell up... there are three basic things here: 1. most greek officials are technologically impaired (kinda like the amish, but more sneaky about it) cops and judges are no different 2. the one who sued blogme (if it is liakopoulos after all) is hardly someone people actually take seriously ...nobody with half a braincell anyway
3. there is a slight possibility this is not real, as he has been the target of far more intense satire and never acted upon it
Greece was a pretty seriously and heinously run dictatorship, courtesy of the CIA and assorted leftover nazis and sympathsizers for a very long time. I don't know what it is like now, but it used to be that way. The rule of the Generals, complete with a lot of massacres, torture, dissapeared people, the regular stuff you get from the oil and drugs soaked US spooks.
To those who feel they might be unjustly persecuted, AnoNet has helped immensely in the direction of anonymity - http://anonetnfo.brinkster.net/
Haven't you heard about Anti-satellite weapon (ASAT) ?
n
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-satellite_weapo
Interesting idea though... with a satellite in space and wireless connection...
That's the gist of it. No one in Europe wants another Hitler/Mussolini/Stalin type debacle, and they think that making people say only nice things will keep the peace.
Shame on the Greek Authorities (Body of Electronic Crime included), really. They've done a pretty good job in arresting criminals that take advantage of child pornography or thieves that take advantage of people's ignorance over the use of electronic payment methods, but some times I doubt if they have the judgeship of how things really work over the internet. Unfortunately there are public prosecutors that simply don't laugh at such accusations.
However, Greek Law is somehow up-to-date for such accusations and I estimate that the defendant will be acquitted. The problem is that the PC of the defendant (confiscated by the authorities) contained important data of his small personal enterprise (that is subsidised by the Greek Unemployment Office - that is in turn funded by European Union) and now his professional reliability is shattered.
Fortune Rota Volvitur
And there's so much talk on here (particularly by foreigners) about how bad the U.S. has gotten. I guess nobody in Greece allows unmoderated comments on their blogs ...
Crack - Free with every butt and set of boobs
Greeks are understandably proud of their achievement and influence in the development of the Western Civ. You know, this whole democracy thing.
Now, the West are seen more as the US and the norhtern Europeans. I have no idea what the point of this post was, and while it's bit sad that Greek gov't is behaving this way, I LOVE Greece and her people. Sort out the Cyprus mess, please.
What will happen when the UN has control of the Internet. Chuck
That's a funny typo. I herby proclaim that the past tense of RSS feed is now RSS fed.
There are two types of people in the world: those who divide people into two types and those who don't.
You know, anti-schizophrenia drugs would really help with your condition.
he just likes living on the edge!
damaged by dogma
This time it's much worse than with the Swedish guy
g ger_arrested/ has a new article.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/10/30/greek_blo
I'm a Greek and I really hope that the "public persona" who sued the bloggers, will find difficult time in court.
I say this from experience. I'm Greek and lived in Athens for four years. You said that they should publicly embarrassed the Greek government. Well, there is no need to do that. Reason being . They do a good job of that on their own. If you didn't know they just recently had their elections and if you have ever watched their pre-election political debate they get up on the podium and fight like a bunch of old housewives. I believe that their government is probably the most corrupt and money under the table country and government, and the money under the table isn't only to politicians. I mean everything works with the money in an envelope there. Being that it's free hospitals (not free, payed by taxes that go up every other week) If you are seriously hurt and you go to the hospital it doesn't matter. you'll sit there for hours till the doctor takes care of the people that gave him a little envelope of money. I personally seen this when I lived there. Same thing with my school bus driver. Being that I'm American, I had to go to the American-Greek school on the old U.S Air Force Base (Helecon) and even though when he picked up a kid about 2 miles down the road he still wanted to go down the other street and make me go to the stop that was about 4 miles from my house, just cause he's lazy. Well, that was fixed with a bribe and he would now stop about 600 yards from my house. Being that the school, buses there are only Privately owned tour buses and the driver gets a list of kids and addresses and he would make up his own route. Now I know I'm a little off topic but this is just to let you know how corrupt things are over there. Not to mention the the border there is a joke and everyone and everything gets in and out of there as they please with no problem. When you go to the supermarket your actually surprised to see a Greek person. It's pull with Albanians, Pakistanis Afghans, Iranians, Iraqi's, Russians. Everything you name it, and I bet you only 10% of them went through customs. If that. Want to talk about terrorist hideouts... that would be the place... The cops over there are a joke... All you see them do is sit in front of their station drink coffee, play cards or backgammon or argue about politics or their soccer team. The only way they catch crooks is if something stupid happens and someone called the police and the crook decides to stay around for a while then they get there about 30 min later. Talk about response time. Now I go there every year to visit my dad and I'll tell you what. Nothing has changed...
Live life to the fullest, you only get one chance at it.
Liakopoulos is crazy (well, if he believes what he says, anyway). He sells books and is always on about how Greeks are better than everyone else and how we've descended from aliens and will conquer the world. Odd that they'd actually raid a house based on what he says, though, I thought he was rather harmless (until now).
I don't think this will go well for the authorities.
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
While i absolutely agree with your gut feelings, the logic behined the "Those societies [ancient Greece and the Roman Republic] were far from being democratic. Power was held by an oligarchy of patricians who ruled plebeian and slave classes." part is flawed:
The term 'democracy' has primarily been defined against the state organization used by the ancient Athenians (and about 80 other democratic cities that Plato described, but the manuscripts describing them have long been lost). So it is a strong contradiction to not call these sociaties democratic. Propably you give a more wider meaning to democrarcy.
Actually this is a common fallacy we often do. First we tend to attribute moral value to state systems, democracy is good, oligarchy is bad, benevolent dictatorship is better, and so on (see Cornelius Castoriadis). Often we promote democracy to the top of the list and eventually we expect everything from it! Wel, that's actually utopia, not democracy.
Democracy was never meant to be applied to all (men, women, rich, slaves, dogs, sheeps, trees and houses). This is a complete different topic; the catholicity of a democracy, which is part of the human rights appendix of democracy. And indeed, the later notions are contradictory to democracy, that somehow we, as humans, have to compromise!
(for instance, we all agree that dogs are not citizens, so we should be allowed to exterminate them with no penalty...or shouldn't we?)
In principal, you can have a democratic way of ruling for an organization (either a revolutionaly party, or a business company, or a city, or a planet) and at the same time, not to allow anyone from outside to participate to your decision-making process. The definition of the outsiders is a very controversial issue.
And think about it for a while: When Athenians devised democracy, they had slaves, as many other cities did, and yet, they were the ones to discover democracy, not the citizens from other cities! Why?
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Ancient Rome is a totally different story! It is a republic, not a democracy! Expect all kinds of differencies here. Apart from the fact that the public did not govern, the public-related decision-making processes were based mostly on majority and voting, while in ancient Athens, the sortion was in widespread use (see Athenian democracy).
Do you realize that for hundreds and even thousends of years cultures like Faraonic Egypt, classic Greece, Rome, Persia, the Ottomans, the Maya, the Inca developped on those countries you mention while people in colder climates lived in huts in what can be only kindly described as townships?
Your monumental ignorance about universal history is only matched by the idiotic conclussions reached by your uninformed, baseless arguments.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Is that some kind of lame pun?
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