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."

Comments

Monsters

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Monsters

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it is an requirement for true religious freedom. Besides, it makes sense.

Re:Monsters

[misterpib]

Keep in mind that this is a country that still hasn't figured out separation of church and state...

Oh, you mean kinda like the USA?

Re:Monsters

[Rakishi]

The blind look towards the past and envision utopias while unable to see all the filth their little eden swam in.

Re:Monsters

[drsmithy]

While there were autocratic episodes (generally by those who turned away from the Church), the rule of the Empire was generally benign and the spiritual well-being of the people was much higher than now, when now much of Greece is experiencing an existential crisis from the empty values imported from the West.

The separation of Church and State does not remove the former's role as a spiritual leader, merely its ability to be a spiritual dictator.

Freedom of Speech

[photomonkey]

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.

Meanwhile, in the USA....

[Pharmboy]

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.

Re:How?

[thanasakis]

Obviously it is not illegal. The guy was set free the next day. And after all this publicity, I suspect that he will have no problem being acquited in trial.

This is yet another example of litigation used as a means of threat. Unfortunately, this doesn't happen around Greece only. The guys that started all this probably don't have a chance in court, but they sure caused a whole lot of trouble to that guy. I only hope that he will countersue them for moral damage and demand a shitload of money in compensation.

Re:Missread...

[Chmcginn]

They would have done a better job. Probably framed him for downloading child porn, and avoided all this bad publicity.