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]

Are the quotes picked randomly or are they chosen or picked automatically by keywords?

Re:Monsters

[chill]

Because government and religion are the two main bastions of power. The only way the little guy has a chance is to play them off each other.

Religion, as a whole, is a very bad thing to base government off of because it is so absolutist. "This is the word of God. You can't argue with God. The gov't is God's will on Earth, so arguing with the gov't is like arguing with God, you heretic." The problem is, God isn't around to run things and the people that do, in His name, are frequently bloody autocrats.

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.

Re:Monsters

[Pig Hogger]

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

That's not it. It's simpler than that.

It's "southernness".

In general, "southern" countries, that is, countries which do not experience overly cold climate have in common the fact that democracy is either poorly developped or a newfangled phenomenon (think of Spain, Greece and Portugal who ditched their fascist dictatorships [often installed by the US] around 30 years ago).

In these countries, the mild climate means that one can live for cheap, as one does not need an elaborate house to keep him warm during the winter.

Thus, the necessity of work is less ingrained in southern populations, and this is reflected by the presence of stupid religions that do not push hard towards hard work (scatholicism, orthododoxy or islam), and actually suppress the accumulation of wealth (for a devout scatholic, making money is a one-way reserved ticket to hell; I recall seeing in a scatholic school book that "money is the devil's dung" [actual french: l'argent est le crottin du diable]).

Contrast this to northern protestant countries where wealth is not only welcome, but necessary for survival in the winter; hence, it's not surprising that protestantism evolved this way because when you have to bust your arse all year long to insure that you won't freeze in winter, any jerk who comes along and tells you that you oughta share with the poor is going to attain #1 grade asshole status pretty quickly...

In southern countries, democracy is underdevelopped also because only a few people managed to hold a disproportionate amount of influence, because they alone worked harder than the rest of the people whose religion does not push them towards hard-work. Hence governments are more tilted towards the oligarchy and the kind of stupid banana-republic antics southern countries are well known for.

The greek blog aggregator crackdown is yet another illustration of this principle that little chickenshit dictators can pop-up everywhere (a good example is the sicilian and calabrese mafias of southern Italy) and are able to bamboozle authorities into silencing critics (interestingly, this principle is also alive and well in the US, too, hardly a southern scatholic country in principle).

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.

Re:Freedom of Speech

[LabRatty]

You may not be near a dictatorship, but you are not as good as you seem to think you are. And certainly not better than the UK.

Freedom of the press survey - http://www.worldaudit.org/press.htm

Including democracy and corruption figures - http://www.worldaudit.org/democracy.htm

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.

Name of the accusor

[Project2501a]

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

Re:Name of the accusor

[Etz Haim]

And what a guy Liakopoulos is...

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:Greeks will Arrest on ANY Suspicion

[Anonymous Coward]

He's Dmitri Fotiou. His website was a riot. The lack of intelligence of these Greek authorities is amazing - they didn't even check the HTML. That's how bloody incompetent they are.

Fotiou still has to report to the police every month. Incredible. They still insist on holding a trial, despite the fact the situation is totally ridiculous.

See these links for more on the Foutiou story.
http://rixstep.com/1/0/20060505,00.shtml
http://rixstep.com/1/0/20060507,00.shtml

Visit Dmitri's blog here.
http://fotiou.net/blog2/blogger.html

And lest we forget: cellphones were officially illegal in Greece at the time of the 2004 Olympics and a representative of the Greek embassy in London at the time was quoted as saying:

"If you know they are illegal then don't bring them into our country."

Both the Fotiou and the spammer/programmer cases are still wide open; in the latter case (which was repeatedly reported to Slashdot at the time but was ignored) the forensic lab returned "no evidence" over ten months ago and still nothing happens - and a simple phone call before calling out the National Guard would have resulted in laughs all around; in the Fotiou case a simple inspection of the HTML would have shown it was all a joke as well. These people are simply too much.

But in Greece that which is a joke is not funny and that which should be taken seriously is a joke. It is the height of hypocrisy and effrontery that this conference be held in this country - a country moreover where over 100 top cabinet and other officials let themselves be spied on through their cellphones for over two years, and where the whistle blower, initially silenced, later committed suicide, and where the government have done everything in their power to hush things up ever since.

Greece is not only one of the most corrupt governments and societies in the world; it is also one of the most clumsy and confused.

Re:Missread...

[Chmcginn]

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