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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."
people crying that free speech here isn't as free as that in Europe. It's not true! It's legal in the U.S. to be racist, homophobic, a Holocaust denier, to be for or against abortion, or any other issue. Hell, it's legal to film sex and sell it here! In Europe, there are a lot of places it's not legal to be any of those things. While they're hateful positions that we can silence by not giving any attention to, the fact you can speak anything without fear is our greatest treasure, in my opinion. In several places in Europe, you go to jail for denying the Holocaust. You go to jail for preaching against homosexuals from your pulpit.
I'm sure I'll be modded down for saying it, but it needs to be said. Free speech is damn free in this country, and I'm glad we're going to even further lengths to protect it!
Test? What test? The Act pretty solidly protects techdirt from the UK parties seeking to enforce a judgment in the US. It doesn't protect them overseas though, but as long as they don't have assets in a country where the judgment can be enforced they shouldn't have a problem. But you're not going to see some dramatic legal case where this is tested.
Is a fucking asshole.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
It would seem a strange turn since the USA allowed a one of its firms to sue a foreign entity not that long ago: http://www.spamhaus.org/organization/statement.lasso?ref=3
UNIX/Linux Consulting
Neither. In two days you will be visited by an old man with a bowler hat and a handlebar mustache. He will knock on your door and ask if you have any ketchup. The next day the same man will appear dressed as a clown sitting in your car. For your own safety just ignore him. You won't see him for two days, and then he will appear in your living room dressed as a devil. Don't worry. He will leave immediately.
After that I can't be sure what will happen, but it will be one of two things. Either you will never see him again, or he will appear in your bedroom just as you're going to bed. I won't describe his appearance. If you're not going to find out, it's better to not know.
If he does appear that one last time, do not fall asleep or you will never wake up again.
Such are the consequences of a first post.
Sweet dreams.
How mankind absolutely cannot recognize the fact that he lives in a global society, and that the internet is a global medium. I'm currently writing this post from Costa Rica where, as a born Canadian citizen and an adopted British and EU Citizen (my mother is Scots) I hold legal residency, and have for 20 years.
It's unfortunate that the ignorance of different laws and customs among those (supposedly) smart people we elect to represent us and judge us leads to this kind of mess. 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?
A decision must be taken: to enforce either the weakest possible or strongest possible law in every case, in order to avoid the arbitrariness not doing this would lead to; or to disconnect the internet.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
The story looks to be about this post http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20041001/0941211.shtml regarding Jeftel in which the company is called out for being a spam sham. This guy doesnt exactly look like the next Richard Branson :) Jeftel.com doesnt exactly resolve to a legit operation either. Just a default holder page. Is this guy just pissed for being caught out? What a douche
Those who can, do. Those who cannot, sue.
Not sure but I do know our libel laws here are in desperate need of overhaul, and many are campaigning for this. We have one of (if not, the) highest libel costs in the whole of Europe, making us a very attractive place for libel tourism, as often is the case whether you're guilty or not doesn't matter, merely defending the court action can be enough to bankrupt you, especially if it's against somebody who has the money to throw at it. I know that can be true in many areas of law, but such is the cost of defending libel cases here in the UK, that the effect is far more exaggerated.
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
Perhaps it is my lack of understanding of law but I fail to see why any firm should care about being sued in a foreign court when they have no presence in that foreign country. First there was the UK spam filtering company sued in the US, now there is this reverse case. Why did the US congress even need to pass the SPEECH act? Aren't US companies protected from UK laws by merely being in the US and not the UK just as the reverse applies? Isn't this what sovereignty means? The only exception would be extradition but that only applies to criminal, not civil cases.
Neither. In two days you will be visited by an old man with a bowler hat and a handlebar mustache. He will knock on your door and ask if you have any ketchup. The next day the same man will appear dressed as a clown sitting in your car. For your own safety just ignore him. You won't see him for two days, and then he will appear in your living room dressed as a devil. Don't worry. He will leave immediately.
Well, those are the most accurate descriptions of the Slashdot editors I've heard. And it sounds like they are really stepping up their anti-First Post campaign.
Straight from simple filters all the way to the handlebar clown devil treatment. No intermediary steps at all. Now that's how things get done on the internet!
My work here is dung.
but you will be met by a wall of ignorance, hysteria, fear, hyperbole, and propaganda
which is fine. life is raw. i would prefer ugly truths to placid lies, which the laws in other countries apparently prefer
the alternative: forbidding people to talk about controversy, is that superior? i don't think so
as the top poster said, i am quite enamored with the usa's right to free speech
but what i don't like currently in the usa though is this melding of opinion and "news" organization, such as with fox news. currently in the usa we are drowning under a flood of misinformation and lies
in other words, i think it is ok to have any opinion you want. but what i don't think is ok is to tell people lies and present it to people as facts, which is what "news" organizations like fox do
what i would like to see is a law somewhere along the lines of "enjoy your free speech, just don't present yourself as an authority on something when you clearly are not an authority, just a bought and paid for huckster"
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
One of the fundamental requirements for a free market is an informed consumer with choices.
One could interpret matters like this as suppliers trying to keep their dirty laundry quiet, trying to keep consumers in the dark, keep them from making fully informed choices. Obviously if available information is clearly incorrect that needs to be fixed, but it's also not clear that that's the case here.
Most people have been looking at this from a freedom-of-speech point of view, and that's valid. But there are other problems with it as well, and the free market implications are one of those.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
"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
I have to say, Jeffrey Morris is a twit, he got my dog pregnant, he pissed in my refrigerator, and I'm pretty sure I saw him talking to Osama Bin Laden and Mel Gibson. Jeffrey Morris smells funny, kind of like fermented horsepiss and turnips. Jeffrey Morris's girlfriend left him for quadriplegic asexual carnival freak.
Ha ha, my plan to shut down /. is practically complete!!!
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
The Internet is not an open-air medium. I am not broadcasting anything to you, as I would by speaking it audibly into airspace or transmitting it into the electromagnetic aether.
I am placing words on a server with a known location. In order for your precious subjects to come across my words and be offended/libeled/scandalized/blasphemed by them, they have to find the server, access it, request the information, decode it, and present to themselves it on their equipment.
And likely their request has to cross an international boundary to reach the server.
Therefore, what I type into my computer that they are not allowed to read in your country is not for you to stop me from posting, nor for you to stop the server from serving. It is for you to tell your subjects not to read, if you choose to have laws that make certain forms of speech illegal in your country.
That's quite aside from the fact that it is likely that making such things illegal makes you a freedom-hating tyrant who can just fuck off.
Something like that yes. I believe what you have to show is damage to reputation, which means you have to show that you had a reputation to damage, and that that reputation has been damaged (eg, if you have a reputation in one area, but the libelous words were spoken elsewhere to someone who'd never heard of you, that wouldn't count).
Whether your reputation was based on a lie or not, and the libelous words uttered were actually, you may be correct in that that is somewhat considered secondary ... the damage is damage. However, what the court awards you for the damage is likely to be affected by this. You may win the case but only be awarded £1 + legal costs. The problem is that the legal costs are likely large enough that even if the court say you don't have to pay damages, you're still ruined. This is why it desperately needs change, because it is just a weapon for the rich.
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
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
Actually if you type Tom Cruise into Google and see what suggestions come up (yes, that's a valid measurement of reputation!) you get things like 'films', 'movies', and 'height', so his overriding reputation seems to be "short actor".
More people in the world know that he's a short actor than know that he's a mental tax evading retard who won't come out of the closet, even though that does appear to be written all over his face.
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
I read somewhere that some people say Jeff Morris raped and murdered a young girl in 1990. He has yet to publically deny these allegations.
was necessary because of the same sort of trbial chest-thumping you find to be a delightful little joke right now. so i guess you didn't learn anything from the suffering your grandparents or great-grandparents went through in the '40s. your jokes are their shame
if you want to find a historical parallel to you current attitude towards the usa, try the attitude of germans towards french, or french towards british, or british towards spanish, etc., shortly before any one of the hundreds of mindless nationalistic tribal wars your continent seems to pretty good at generating
frankly, your attitude is the problem
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage 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)
So people are free to say hateful things...
And other people are free to respond like those at Columbine.
Is that the freedom American worship? The freedom to cause hurt to the level that people go off and kill 20-30 people in revenge?
Free speech for violence....
I would tend to like to see some limits, but understand why not having any is better than having someone else decide what those limits might be, though we do have limits, on people viewing or showing *legal* things like having sex, but have no limits on showing people doing illegal things....
So, why in all this talk about freedoms are there so many limits on sexual content in the media in the US?
Are americans really free to show their own porn movie on their front porch where anyone can watch? I don't think so.... How about putting on a free show? Nope...lewd and lascivious behavior! So much for that freedom of expression thing -- if it doesn't involve violent fighting words, it's fair game for censorship. OR if you are 'a student' (on public school grounds)...how you aren't really allowed freedoms of everyone else (where does it say you only get constitutional rights when you are 18?)
The US is pretty twisted -- not that I'm saying it's any worse than any place else, though.
But real freedom of expression? In the US? That's a laugh. Free to insult & criticize isn't the same thing as freedom of expression.
Yes, but sadly part the reason we have such a fucked up libel system though is because we have a press that's historically been allowed to get away with basically just outright lying about people in their publications and never having to post a retractment, hence why we got tough libel laws to counter that.
I want the libel laws reformed as much as anyone, but they better come with stronger accountability for false press stories, so that we don't go back to a situation where papers can perform character assassinations freely or cheaply (i.e. for much less than it earns them in profit).
On one hand you've got retarded libel laws, and on the other you've got papers like Murdoch's Daily Mail just gagging to be able to write stories about how Richard Dawkins raped 20 children in a drug fuelled satanic orgy that immigrants and muslim terrorists supported whilst all simultaneously saluting an effigy of Hitler. The scary thing is, knowing the Daily Mail that's probably not a far fetched story for them at all. See her for example:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-550109/Formula-One-boss-Max-Mosley-exposed-sadomasochist-Nazi-orgy-prostitutes.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-553408/Under-fathers-shadow-The-truth-disgraced-Max-Mosley-son-Nazi-sympathiser-Oswald.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1032803/Bizarre-sex-life-F1-boss-Max-Mosley-revealed-court-insists-Its-perfectly-harmless-private.html
How did it turn out? Well, the whole event actually had fuck all to do with "Nazis", that was entirely made up by Murdoch's papers (Daily Mail, News of the World etc.). The courts ruled in Mosley's favour.
Whilst we don't want to muzzle the press, or prevent it writing controversal, but factual stories, we clearly do need massive penalties for papers like this, that just make extremely over the top shit up to try and grossly defame people. S&M may not be to many people's taste, but at the end of the day what he did was in his own time, in a private place, with his own money, with the consent of the people involved, and importantly- without any kind of fascist theme to it, it was that, that libelous part that had to be added to make it a story, and libel for the case of making a story is just wrong.
Again, I really hate libel laws, and I'm cautious of the danger of any extra accountability for the press being used to muzzle them when they tell the truth. But clearly libel reform can't allow papers to get away with this shit even more easily than they do now either. The court system seems the right place to decide these cases, and libel seems the right tool to deal with them, so it's a tough problem to solve- you could just add extra penalties when the press are guilty of libel as opposed to private individuals, but then are web pages classed as press and so on? I don't know what the solution is, and I'm concerned the politicians don't either such that any changes to libel laws may cause other problems. This is something that needs to be thought through and done properly.
Well, isn't that the whole point of law?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.