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Iceland Votes "Já" To Proposed News Haven
eldavojohn writes "The proposed rules shielding journalists harbored in Iceland are now official. It appears that sites like Wikileaks and Cryptome could have a friendlier home base. For those familiar with the Icelandic tongue, the voting results and legalese. Some of the details can be found at www.immi.is."
It would be nice to get something like this in the US.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
of ashes!!
Seems like the "socialist" Scandinavian countries are the most honest and "free". I've visited many of them and always been received with kindness. Yes, the women are as attractive and "fun" as stereotyped. Time to investigate moving there.
According to the article, Iceland did this to make it a more desirable server location. Seems like that market can serve as an incentive for more "data friendly" laws; Here's hoping other countries follow suit.
I do not have a sig. You are hallucinating.
The proposal to draft some rules is now official. The rules themselves will now be drafted by a committee, and then the committee will present them to the legislature, which may then in the future enact them. The proposal is indeed promising, as is the strong (unanimous) support for tasking the committee with fleshing it out, but what exactly the committee will come back with could vary quite a bit.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Nothing a little Gunboat Diplomacy couldn't resolve.
The Evil Empire will never find us here, General Assange!
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
That will probably be all undone as a condition to EU membership (which I think is inevitable at this point).
how dare they!
...flat, drab passion meanders across the screen in reaction to this piece. And the crowd goes "Yay."
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
yeah, it's easy have a successful social democratic welfare state when your country is racially homogeneous.
It's a trap!
And nobody should know about abuses of power either. Gosh, if the American public ever found out why so much of the world hates them, what would happen then?!?
Terrorists attacked the USA, and the people have no idea why. You think "Freedom hating bastards! That's why they did it!" Perhaps if the American people understood that the government that (mis)represents them is what is getting otherwise innocent Americans killed, then it could stop.
Please Americans, you need to pull your head out of your asses! For your own good as well as the rest of us. Blind Patriotism chanting "we're number one" does not make it so. If you only knew how far from number one you actually are, you could do something about it. Reclaim that title. America was wonderful, and a land of the free. So much has been lost, and ignorance of so much around you will erode what little is left. I fear it may already be too late. I hope it is not.
Now if only Iceland hid some forgotten caches of WW2-era war-gold then it would be the perfect placr to build The Crypt
Admit nothing. Deny Everything. Make Counter-accusations.
Posting military documents that get leaked is not just journalism and should not be protected. What gets overlooked is that most countries spy on each other, and have vast amounts of other countries encrypted mail. This is not a problem until someone leaks the actual wire. By amassing enough of these unencrypted vs. encrypted matches other countries can get a real leg up in the computing time needed to crack keys. So while the state dept might end up with egg on its face this "journalism" winds up with huge potential for dead soldiers. I'll admit this is extreme, but possible.
sig loading.......
...you insensitive clod!
Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, you can leave politics alone, but politics won't leave you alone.-rms
For those small island states, especially broke ones, you need to invent a reason for people to care. This kind of freedom of speech could bring in money in one form or another and help remake Iceland. Good for them!
"Men willingly believe what they wish." - Julius Caesar
I've got like, several trillion interstellar krona.
Iceland takes those, right? Right?!
The Greater Good
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUpbOliTHJY
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
How long will they be able to resist the strong arm tactics of the WTO and UN.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Doesn't the U.S. already have a law protecting journalists?
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
no one listens to that old rag any more. they just use it as a rhetorical bludgeon when not in power.
next you'll tell me you should have protection against warrantless searches. Good one!
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
I would like to correct some popular myths that suicide rates are supposedly high in Scandinavia.
The following material illustrates that Scandinavia is at approximately the same levels as the US. In fact in some aspects the rates are lower in some Scandinavian countries. Norway has lower rates for male suicides than the US (15.7 vs 17.7).
Suicides per 100,000 people per year:
Scandinavian countries:
Denmark 11.9
Norway 11.5
Sweden 13.2
North American countries:
United States of America 11.0
Canada 11.3
Nordic countries:
Iceland 11.2
Finland 18.8
P.S. Finland is not Scandinavian because of its ethnic, historical and cultural background. In my opinion Finland has much more in common with its eastern neighbor, Russia, and the Baltic states. The supposedly higher alcohol consumption and cultural differences could be explanations for their higher suicide rates.
Like Finland Iceland is not considered part of Scandinavia but the wider "Nordic" category due to differences in geography and language. The three Kingdoms (DK/NO/SE) share closer ties in a historical political, economic and cultural union.
July
http://www.oenanthe.co.uk/tours/iceland_summer_2010/header.jpg
August to June
http://www.addictedtotravel.com/Resources/Images/Cache/2008/11/1acc756e27da49b4b579a75f8693e6f7-460-460_460-306.png
Iceland votes "yes" on proposed news haven.
In other news, yesterday US sent official greetings because of the national day June 17th, reminding Icelanders about good old times and promising friendship and support during the current financial crisis. (text Icelandic only, but there's a Hillary video)
I think you're missing my point here.
Finland is just as good as any other Nordic or European country, in fact in some ways you're better. Your schools are much better according to the OECD.
I don't know if you objected to my description of your status as a Nordic country or not? It's surprising to some Finns that they're not Scandinavian, especially with your historical ties to Sweden. Then again Sweden held large parts of the Baltics, and they're not Scandinavian either.
The historical Scandinavia is centered around Skåne (Scania), and the three Kingdoms that united under the Kalmar Union.
Denmark, Norway and Sweden share the same ancestry, ethnicity, language and culture. Finland is not part of that as you may well know.
However the recent Nordic cooperation this century has meant that all the Nordic countries have similar societies. The "Swedish" model as it's called has spread and we're now on similar terms. We [here] all live in peaceful, orderly social-democratic welfare states.
Your shared border with Russia has meant Finland has developed differently from say Sweden or Norway. As you know NATO membership has always been a difficult issue for Finland because of Russia, the whole Baltic joined as soon as possible when they could(!)
No doubt the fear of provoking Russia, not to mention your [ethnic] brethren in Karelen in present day Russia held you back.
I'm a native Scandinavian, I've been to all of the Scandinavian, Nordic and Baltic countries countless times.
It's my opinion from my encounters with Finns in my own country, in Finland and other countries that you have your own very special culture.
This is what I think you didn't understand, let me explain further.
I don't think we share the same culture tendencies at all, as you admitted Finns have a different alcohol consumption pattern.
There are other differences too, it's difficult to observe and see this from within, but your people have a different set of attitudes and way of life.
Your whole culture feels distinctly different from Sweden, you have the same products on sale, but that's not what I'm referring to.
The fact that your language is isolated from the Scandinavian languages probably has had an impact too, we Scandinavians can understand each others [Germanic] languages. Finnish is only related to Hungarian as you know.
To me the Finnish people feels more similar to Russians in their attitudes.
I would go as far as to compare the art, literature and musical traditions of Finland, I find very few similarities with [us] your neighbors there. Dark and somber are keywords.
Even just listening to Sibelius makes me think about Finland’s long struggle for independence from Russia.
So while your country works almost the same way, you don't share the same culture, and *that* could explain a difference in suicide rates.
We still love you, Finland, we're just not the same.
all the undersea cables connecting to Iceland have been 'accidentally' cut by dropped anchors.
I beg to differ! I wonder how you can claim that! Do you even know European history?
Finland was part of Russia at one point! Later Russia let them go only to steal large parts of Finland (Karelen) and "Russified" the population.
As for the Baltic connection:
Then there's the fact that Estonians speak practically the same language! That's a very real connection right there!
Now I could go on and inform you that Imperial Sweden ruled not only Finland but the Baltic states for some time.
However my original point was that Finland and Finnish culture has much in common, in my opinion, with their neighbors on either side.
As for Hungary, Finland's over three time the size of Hungary. I don't think they have anything in common with Hungary apart from the language. Finland is much more like Sweden than anything else.
I've been to both countries, have you?
However they do have the language family in common. That's really just another part of my point, they are distinctly different from their neighbors in Scandinavia.
The Finn-Ugric peoples is a misnomer, as the only thing they have in common is the language family. They don't speak the same language.
They are technically ethnically related, however distant that might be today. They don't look anything alike.
Especially considering the Swedish empire brought a lot of Swedish blood. There's a reason they have Swedish as an official language in Finland now.
I would like to correct you though, it's not "German" but Germanic languages. We don't speak German here.
Danish, Swedish and Norwegian belong to different groups of Indo-European Germanic languages.
No clue why modded to "Redundant"; posted anonymously, but it was my first sentiment.
Iceland had wanted to join the EU. But I guess this puts an end to these plans. Well, Iceland isn't in Europe anyhow, and much of the EU seems to be having a lot of problems similar to what Iceland has been having as of late. The question then becomes, what economic value is being a 'data haven' going to bring, and how serious are they? The economic benefits only accrue when there is significant 'hosting' regulations around the world, particularly in well-off countries (which their are), and not much or not very effective 'browsing' regulations (the efficiency of existing 'great walls' can be debated). A bigger problem comes when the country becomes PRIMARILY a data haven - at that point, major censor powers will find it easy and effective to just blacklist all of the data haven's IP addresses / ASNs. This does not cut all traffic from country A (say, for instance, Pakistan) to country B (Iceland), but cuts off access to the unsophisticated Internet user, greatly lowering the economic value of being a data haven. But this may be overcome by having mirror sites and anonymizing proxies all over the world, with Iceland becoming a 'legal black hole' for subpoenas and the like.
There's an ugly side of being a data haven, beyond the normally expected ones, and that is being a spam haven. This may be where Iceland makes a lot of its money in this scheme. But the liberty afforded by their plan is so great, that spam is a minor price to pay. If they're serious, I congratulate them. If they're not, then shame on them.