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Legal Threat Demands Techdirt Shut Down
An anonymous reader writes "Earlier this month, the US approved a new law to fight against so-called 'libel tourism,' the practice of suing US companies in foreign jurisdictions (quite frequently, the UK) which do not have the same level of free speech protections. The new law, the SPEECH Act, may now get put to the test, as lawyers for a guy named Jeffrey Morris in the UK, who was upset about some comments on a 2004 blog post on Techdirt, have demanded the entire site shut down due to those unidentified comments."
There's not much else I prefer in all honesty, but you guys got freedom of speech down cold.
Well, long as it's not more than four words from a lyric out of a RIAA owned song.
Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
Is a fucking asshole.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
But Oh my god, don't show nudity on public TV! That's just obscene!
Bye!
Why can the US enforce it's own very restrictive copyright laws and extradite people from oh, I don't know, Australia for example, to face criminal copyright infringement charges; only to turn around and then prevent its citizens (real or corporate) to be shielded from other countries' laws?
Because the leaders of Australia went "Oh, go ahead, here he is! We'll even send a police escort with him, and pay for the plane tickets!"
You'll never convince a European of that; the vast majority seem utterly convinced they are experts on American culture (and what's wrong with it).
It's even legal in the US to be Jeffrey Morris, though he will now go down in the internet archives as a complete prat whom you should never do business with.
The ______ Agenda
"It is entirely possible that the lawyers were unaware of the SPEECH Act, but it does seem like a law firm making legal threats in a foreign country should be expected to have researched the legal barriers to making such a claim before using billable hours to make threats they cannot back up."
The law firm doesn't care if their threats are stupid:
Client: I want to sue!
Attorney: Well, you don't have grounds and probably can't win.
Client: I don't care! I want to sue!
Attorney: Okay. (Now with a clear conscience, turns on the clock.)
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
it's ok for europeans to hate americans. its ok for anyone to hate the usa for any aspect of our history or national character they find repugnant. you're completely welcome, be my guest, it's a free world (or rather, it should be a free world)
but what i dislike is when americans are held accountable for crimes and weaknesses that basically every human being is guilty of. or when the atrocities of the american government are given special analysis for high holy indignation, while much worse atrocities of the same form from other governments are completely ignored, minimized, or excused, including from their own government. not that a crime committed by another government excuses the crimes of the american government. but it doesn't excuse critics of the usa to focus their high holy indignation on the usa alone, when whatever ugly game in question is played by everyone
your criticism must be intellectually honest, or your criticism isn't valid
i repeat: there is plenty about the usa to hate. but what about the usa do you hate? if your answer is that you hate the usa for what everyone does, then that merely means you are propagandized and out of touch with the reality of the world you live in
the full force of your criticism should be based on principles, and principles alone. you will find then that the targets for your criticism flwo freely all over the world, and not along the lines of geopolitical tribal entities. but if your criticisms adhere too strongly to geopolitical boundaries, where what your country does is excused, but what their country does is not, then your own attitude is part of the problem, perhaps even more that that of americans or the usa
and, btw, my words here apply equally to americans who view the usa as untouchable and squeaky clean, and some other place or country the root of all evil: the inverse of irrationally hating the usa: irrationally loving the usa, is equally wrong
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
You're right, asking people how they feel about the US in a representative manner is a fundamentally flawed way of establishing a country-by-country perception of the US. And we should totally exclude those things which make people view the US more favorably. Gosh, what was I thinking. /s
it never was. i'm sorry that YOU at one time thought it was
but don't hold it against me that your idealism about the usa was shattered, as i never had such idealism
if some asshole once said to you "america is the best! believe in it!" i'm sorry you got sold a bill of goods. right now, there are assholes in every country: china is the best! russia is the best! india is the best! etc., selling the same crappy merchandise. why don't you believe what they say? why don't you hold it against them that they have tribal chest thumping ultranationalists? there's tribal chest thumping ultranationalist for every nationality. why do you only hold the usa guilty for a crime every nation commits?
you should be mad at yourself for ever believing such nonsense in the first place, you should be mad at your own gullibility
you're nothing but an ex-fanboy, you've fallen out of love with my country. fine. i didn't ask you to love my country, that's your own fault
likewise, that you hate my country is your own fault too
the only valid way for you to feel about my country is completely neutral. if you feel anything else, you're the one with a problem in how you view the world you live in
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
You have perfect freedom of speech. The government, you know, the guys with the laws? They won't do anything to stop you from saying whatever you want. In Europe, you have both governmental AND social pressure. US, it's only social pressure. It's also why we somewhat protect anonymous speech, so people can say what needs said without knee-jerk consequences.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
I dislike the US trying to tell the UK what Constitution it should have, particularly as the US has actively condemned any interference by other nations in the US' legal system. (Including, I might add, efforts by the UN to prevent a Mexican being executed. Seems to me the death penalty is just a tad more severe than the UK's libel system -- even after factoring in listening to the lawyers.)
I doubly resent this clamp-down because the US has profited greatly from countries like the UK exporting civil cases to the US where the US' laws would be better for the plaintiff. Indeed, the US actively encourages lawsuit tourism when it is the money-maker. I'm sorry, but double standards don't wash.
If the US wants to impress anyone with this effort, then it must cut both ways. If they want other nations to respect US Constitutional rights, the the US has to respect its international obligations as well. That includes not letting the RIAA order "DeCSS Jon"-style stormtrooper action, not pressuring India to drop all action against American companies over Bhopal, not pressuring other nations to come up with bogus charges against people like the owner of Wikileaks, honoring the warrant against the 22 CIA agents in Italy for kidnap, etc. Further, if they want cases that are fundamentally American in nature to be heard in America, they must prohibit cases that are fundamentally the property of those nations to hear those cases.
The reality is, we know damn well that the US won't ban foreign lawsuits and will continue to infringe on the sovereignty of other nations. As, indeed, will all other nations. It's not uniquely a US problem. However, just considering the US, it is insanity to have these kinds of one-way barriers. That infringes on freedom far more than the libel cases ever did, especially given the sheer magnitude of some of them. (Any one of the ones I noted are way worse than all of the libel cases exported from the US combined.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
They won't do anything to stop you from saying whatever you want.
Except if there's money involved and potentially an over-the-top cost lawsuit. Or asymmetric contractual obligations. Or fraud. Or patents. Or copyright. Or "think of the children". Or terrorism. Or "national security". Or a verbal threat to the president. Or shouting "fire!" in a theatre. Or...
Face it, the US obsession with so-called "free speech" is bizarre. The amount of free speech available in the US is pretty much the same as any modern western democracy. Yes, you can probably foam at the mouth about lots of things but only problem is, the glaring exception is that anytime anything important is involved, like money, that so-called freedom-of-speech goes out the window.
Sorry, but being able to talk however you like about unimportant things isn't very important. Really. And in addition actions speak louder than words.
Try talking about how all cops are pigs and deserve to die when there are police around. Try talking about how you think it'd be justice for America's crimes in the middle east if a bomb blows up your plane at an airport. Try talking about how you think al qaeda are spot on in blowing up the twin towers in new york.
In fact, try talking about a gag order issued by the FBI and give details about it:
http://www.daniweb.com/news/story304255.html
Presumably with your assumption of freedom and believe that people shouldn't be able to say what they wish, you're against a ban of teaching creationism in science class? Surely a teacher with strong religious believes, no matter how invalid should have the right to speak to their class about those beliefs if free speech is to sit above all else?
Feel free to read from here down to the bottom of the article to get yourself plenty more examples that demonstrate that no, you don't always have free speech in the US:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_in_the_United_States#Types_of_restraints_on_speech
No, your freedom of speech in the US is as much a fantasy as it is in Europe. Sure certain European nations ban things the US doesn't, but there are other things where it works both ways- public talk sympathetic to the Nazi's might be banned in some European countries for example, but those countries don't infringe civil liberties with things like warrantless wiretaps. You seem to be suggesting there's no situation in which limits on freedom of speech can improve society, but in the context of one specific case for example do you really believe the interest of society is better served by the Phelps group being allowed to spout the stuff they do publicly more so than it being banned so that people such as grieving parents of deceased soldiers don't have to face it on funeral day?
Ultimately the American viewpoint comes down to a deeply embedded paranoia of government, there's a fear that if they accept that some speech being banned does in fact improve society, there's a fear that it will lead to a slippery slope and be used negatively against legitimate speech, so the American solution is to simply pretend that you have and must keep free speech at all costs, all the whilst using less direct methods of stifling speech you don't like. In contrast, in Europe, we're just upfront about what is unwanted and unacceptable in a modern civilised society- but still just as cautious of the slippery slope problem, and it is precisely that caution that means despite having laws against hate speech in public and so forth, we're still not living in brutal dictatorships, and in many parts of Europe, are even more free than the average American citizen.
The problem with American viewpoints like yours, is that you basically believe America's own bullshit- land of the free, a global symbol of respect for civil liberties and all that. Yet this is the country that's performed torture, extraordinary rendition, the country that has bans on abortions, that's grossly homophobic even at the state level, that allowed warrantless wiretapping and so forth. It's like the couple that appear fine as if they are the perfect couple in public, but where the husband beats her when they're at home in private, the public face Americans feel they must put on, is quite different to the reality of US laws and actions. You can keep telling yourselves America is all well and good and that it's citizens are completely free, but that wont stop the rest of the world being able to see that that really just isn't the case. That is what Europeans find so bizzare about Americans.