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Belarus Bans Use of Foreign Websites
bs0d3 writes "A new law in Belarus prohibits people from using 'foreign' websites. The law requires that all companies and individuals who are registered as entrepreneurs in Belarus use only domestic Internet domains for providing online services, conducting sales, or exchanging email messages. The tax authorities and the secret police are authorized to investigate violations."
Belarus is a dictatorship with a history of human rights abuse. All bets are off.
Thank you for providing us anti-SOPA people with a rhetorical example of an internet rights disaster that is less politically sensitive than China. (Also, it may be time for another revolution.)
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
This is different from post SOPA USA how?
* Carthago Delenda Est *
This will do nothing more than work to isolate the Belorussians and stifle their growth going forward. Shortsightedness leading to stagnation in the name of security...
Coldmoon over Dark water...
Sound like a country determined to be poor.
If you live in that country you may as well just stop using the internet completely then, since it's effectively not the internet anymore, just an extremely small walled garden. Anyone want to take bets on exactly how many weeks this continues before they rescind it? A move like this couldn't be good for any country's economy.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
"Additionally, the Law states that the owners and administrators of Internet cafés or other places that offer access to the Internet might be found guilty of violating this Law and fined and their businesses might be closed if users of Internet services provided by these places are found visiting websites located outside of Belarus and if such behavior of the clients was not properly identified, recorded, and reported to the authorities."
From TFA
Wow, someone doesn't understand World Wide Web do they? Why don't they just block all access out side of Belarus and run it like a big LAN.
I overlooked that. Alright people downvote me!
Wrong. From TFA: "Additionally, the Law states that the owners and administrators of Internet cafés or other places that offer access to the Internet might be found guilty of violating this Law and fined and their businesses might be closed if users of Internet services provided by these places are found visiting websites located outside of Belarus and if such behavior of the clients was not properly identified, recorded, and reported to the authorities. The Law states that this provision may apply to private individuals if they allow other persons to use their home computers for browsing the Internet."
If you're not allowed to go to an internet cafe and visit slashdot.org without being identified and reported to the authorities, that sounds pretty close to being banned from using a foreign site to me.
will be right over to liberate the Belaruse people.... right over....any time now... oh they only have trees....
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
I get the impression that this only applies to commercial transactions... So visiting Slashdot alone probably won't run afoul of the law, but donating money to Slashdot might.
Either way this law is ridiculous. Trade is a good thing; they're basically cutting themselves out of the global market.
For those who are unaware, Belarus is ruled by a turd named Alexander Lukashenko. He's been their president since 1994 and initially increased presidential term limits from the standard five years to seven and later removed presidential term limits altogether.
Some of his memorable moments include:
... and so on.
In other words, such stories while shocking are, IMO, hardly surprising ...
liberated!!
I can only imagine that you're yet to recover from your New Year's binge.
It's unknown how accurate the summary in TFA is, but if my quote above is correct, that sounds like a lot more than just commercial transactions. Of course, it could be a stupidly-written law that meant to only apply to commercial transactions, but that's irrelevant as the law's text is what's important, but again, the accuracy of the article is unknown; it's common for "journalists" these days to totally screw up basic facts.
I see that protectionism is something you are against, as am I. Hail fellow, well met!
Do you agree with me that no moral case can be made for further impoverishing workers in poor countries to further enrich incredibly rich (by world standards) US union members?
It's not that I don't get the politics of protectionism, I just have this little conscience problem when I consider the big picture.
Control. If everyone is breaking the law, you can arrest anyone at any time for any reason.
The reason for this is not as clear.
Presumably it's the same reason why typewriters were so strictly controlled in the 'good old days'; so they can send the secret police around to whoever is found accessing an evil foreign web site and arrest the owner of the computer.
Censorship? How is it censorship? They're not preventing anyone from doing business, only setting the rules for doing business. That's well within their right.
The US-managed .com, .net, and .org spaces scare the shit out of a lot of people, especially with SOPA on the table.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
This is exactly the type of laws that protectionists and tea party activists want. They hate foreigners, and want to force people not to interact or trade with them.
If you are going to spout mindless drivel like this, please use the term "tea-baggers" so we can filter you more easily. Thanks!
Censorship? How is it censorship? They're not preventing anyone from doing business, only setting the rules for doing business. That's well within their right.
If you like it so much, could I suggest you go and live there?
Ah, the ad hominem attack. The favourite defense of someone with nothing useful to say.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Imagine this were the USA and Western Europe situation: there is no www.google.com, yro.slashdot.org, www.facebook.com, or similar. Everything you do in in the *.cn domain, with IP addresses assigned by the Chinese, and physically located in China. Would that be a good situation for the USA or Western Europe?
It's no different for Belarus.
(bummer, because I **like** the USA having more control over Belarus)
I can assure you the politicians controlling the Tea Party want nothing to do with any regulation or protectionism. You might find some common people who identify as TPers who might be in favor of some protectionism, but they don't control anything. As soon as one of the politicians tells them "protectionism is bad! regulation is bad!" they'll change their minds.
No. You are stupid.
We're Number Two! We're Number Two!
Yeah, Baby! We are now only the second stupidest country on the planet regarding writing Internet laws that completely misunderstand how the Internet works. Thanks Belarus! You've shown that our politicians are not quite the most ignorant twits in positions of power on Earth!
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
I don't see it that way. The way I see it, they're saying if you want to do business with our citizens, you must register your business nationally, abide by our laws, and use our TLD so people know your legally allowed to do business here.
Unless they're stopping foreign businesses from registering TLD sites or starting local offices that can register the TLDs, I see NOTHING like censorship in the proposal. The world is NOT America's oyster.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I guess there won't be any WOW players in Belarus
It's a hell of a lot more rational way of doing what SOPA tries to do.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
You don't have to lie about the Tea Party to make it look bad. They can do that quite well themselves.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Being intentionally obtuse while making no arguments won't win you any supporters.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Yea, just the other day I went to www.baidu.cn and the secret police arrived and arrested me.
Seriously, what are you smoking?
Fortunately the country's benevolent leadership has created "Worlds of Belarus", which provides Belarusian youth with hours of endless online fun!
Activities include marching, buying bread, and standing in line. As you gain experience levels, you can compare how short Belarusian lines are compared to those in corrupt western states.
#DeleteChrome
Very misleading. I read the original in Russian, it says:
1. It prohibits use or foreign registered websites for sales and services to Belarus people by Belarussian companies. No one prohibited Facebook or Google.
2. Internet cafe owners could be held liable if they provide access to the list of forbidden (restricted) websites. Not for violation of this law.
Look, having a .com, .net, .org, or .edu does not mean you are legally entitled to do business everywhere in the world. There are still local laws you have to follow.
Mandating a country-code TLD registration and a local business presence is a perfectly valid requirement for doing business with the citizens and organizations of a country. And it provides a clear indicator to users of the internet as to whether a website owner IS complying with local law.
I'd MUCH rather see this approach become standard than SOPA or the Chinese approach to censorship.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
And what SOPA tries to do IS censorship. TFA says that individuals accessing a foreign websites will be guilty of a misdemeanor, and that letting someone access foreign websites on your computer may leave you liable. That is straight up censorship, and it's a completely idiotic law. SOPA is idiotic too, though.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I actually like this, which is weird, because I wouldn't have thought so. But it makes sense that in order to benefit from all of the various business-related incentives that your country may provide, including your business licence in the first place, that you continue to spend your money domestically.
I run a business in Canada, and I use Rackspace out of the U.S.A.. I've very happy with Rackspace, as anyone should be, they are indeed fantastic in every way. But I feel guilty for not remaining in Canada, and do wish that they'd open a Canadian datacentre. Recently, I've found a worthy Canadian competitor, and simply cannot justify the transitional effort.
But I'd appreciate such a law. Sure it would cause momentary distress for me and for my business, but I think it would improve competition amongst my competitors, and also attract foreign suppliers -- Rackspace included.
So, certain foreign registered websites are illegal to use. Internet cafe owners will be prosecuted if they tell their clients which ones they are so they can avoid breaking the law. So they will all break the law!
a diabolical plan! SPECTRE would be proud.
The actual law says that if you trade in Belarus, your servers should physically be in Belarus (pretty scary, if you ask me), and they should be "properly registered" (whatever this means) with the state. This registration requirement may or may not force you to use their ccTLD, I cannot find any information on this.
It also says that if you let others to use your network, you must identify your users and keep logs for one year. You also must not let people access stuff that is illegal to access. I think this one is close to what they have in some parts of Westen Europe.
Apparently its strawman day on slashdot. I wait with bated breath to see the next one.
I'd MUCH rather see this approach become standard than SOPA or the Chinese approach to censorship.
False dichotomy. It is not necessary that we choose between these; there still remains the option of an open Internet, despite what some would have you believe.
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
This is plain stupid. A human will not stand and stare. A human will stab and be fare. It's just a matter of time.
Being intentionally obtuse while making no arguments won't win you any supporters.
What?! Have you never listened to talk radio? Or politicians?
$5 says that this won't apply to Alexander Lukashenko, his cronies, or anyone else in a position of power in the government of Belarus.
Hey msobkow has a really great point here -- that using non-US tlds conveniently bypasses SOPA in every meaningful way. Howabout we all migrate to .tv ? <trollface/>
char*f="char*f=%c%s%c;main(){printf(f,34,f,34);}";main(){printf(f,34,f,34);}
We're a democracy! That means that the vast majority of the people agree that the internet as we know it should be destroyed, because the RIAA and MPAA aren't making enough money! Because of piracy! Likewise, we've decided that suspending miranda rights and indefinite detention without a trial or chance to confront your accusers is A-OK! I know that China is rubbing their hands gleefully because they think they can point at us as an example of moral rightness and claim they're just following our example. But it's different! Because here, EVERYONE decided that, while over there the Communist Party did! You see how it's different, right?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I never quite understood why the focus on typewriters; if someone wants to write something the government doesn't like, it's easy enough to just get a pen and some paper, right? Yes, handwriting can be identified, but it isn't that hard to change your writing into something different from your regular handwriting; write in all-caps, for instance, or practice using your left hand.
So I guess you're in favour of dictating to the nations how they're going to do business with the world?
They have no right to demand you follow local law?
They have no right to demand you pay taxes on products or services sold in their markets?
They have no right to demand you open a local office?
You just register a .com and an offshore company somewhere, and you should be free to rape and pillage the globe as you see fit?
Pfft. Your blind acceptance of the American-dominant perspective that the US can do whatever they want is pathetic. The world does not have to do things your way, no matter where the DNS root servers reside.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
One of the effects will be no more Belarus people getting jobs on freelancer.com. The freelancers from the rest of the world will rejoice because of the slightly reduced competition.
Maybe, but changing the server name won't be a major problem. The Belarus players instead are going to be cut off from any game server on a non .by domain. I'm afraid that the list is long.
So I guess you're in favour of dictating to the nations how they're going to do business with the world? [...]
First of all, doing business and viewing websites are not the same thing. This is a censorship law masquerading as nationalist economic policy. Secondly, none of those things you say require this law. A country can put tariffs and customs fees on imported goods to protect local economies if that is truly their intention. Having a .com TLD, or any other for that matter, is unrelated to whether a company follows local laws or not.
Pfft. Your blind acceptance of the American-dominant perspective that the US can do whatever they want is pathetic. The world does not have to do things your way, no matter where the DNS root servers reside.
I'm not American. Nor is the entire Internet besides Belarus. But thanks for the ignorance-induced lecture on US hegemony.
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
I disagree completely. The .com, .org, and .net TLDs are your public, global websites. They're available to anyone. But having them redirect to a .cc TLD is not difficult, unreasonable, or uncommon.
This is NOT censorship -- it's a nation telling you what you have to do if you want their business. You do NOT have the right to shove your advertising, your business, your website, or anything else down the throat of the world just because you have a .com.
I call it an American-dominant perspective because it's mostly American-owned companies that use and want the .coms broadcast to the globe. Well, guess what, the globe does not have to let you do that.
I'd rather see the Belarusians allow the .com, .net, and .org TLDs as well, but I adamantly and absolutely defend their right to determine their own rules for doing business in their society. If that means no more twitter, no more google, and so on, so be it.
It's no easier to implement http://mydomain.com/cc than it is to register http://mydomain.cc/. Your cries of censorship are misguided and dictatorial to nations that want you to follow their rules. Who the hell are YOU to tell them how you are going to do business with them? THEY set the rules for their nation, not you.
You are, of course, free to skip serving their market.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
> So, certain foreign registered websites are illegal to use. Internet cafe owners will be prosecuted
Yes. Your sarcasm is misdirected. Lists of blocked websites exists in every country, including US an UK. If internet cafe refuses to comply with such list it will be prosecuted. No one blocked WOW, Google or any other regular website. The rest of the law regulates online business transactions between Belarus businesses in Belarus. Read the article.
I am left handed, you insensitive clod!
Where is this list of blocked websites in the USA? Will anybody be prosecuted if they are told what they are?
I have yet to see ANY of the Tea Party candidates come out and say SOPA is bad law, will veto it if it comes to them when in office, and if it gets passed before they take office will refuse to enforce it and pressure Congress to revoke it.
I have heard from a second-hand source that Ron Paul is against it. But he's not Tea Party.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
No one has the right to tell anyone else how to traverse the Internet, period. The Internet is not the government's to do anything with (unless they own a part of it in which case they can do whatever they want to that part--server, router, switch). We already have laws that address everything anyone could ever possibly do illegally on the Internet. No more laws need to to be made about anything. The most refreshing action a government could take is: NOTHING. The stink of the Peter Principle is think in the air; instead of taking care of real issues like enforcing laws and managing the aspects of the economy they ARE responsible for they continue to muck around with shit that is not of their domain--a real circus.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
The US citizens have not lost a single right guaranteed by the constitution or Bill of Rights and the right to be anonymous is not mentioned in any of these founding documents.
You are either a decent troll or a fucking idiot. Stop claiming that the US Constitution grants us rights, it in no way grants rights. The Constitution is a framework to define and limit power of the Federal government AND ABSOLUTELY NOTHING MORE.
How dare you claim that some person, people or document granted me my rights as a human being. That notion is vile and disgusting.
Where is this list of blocked websites in the USA?
You have to wait for SOPA to pass first. In the meantime, there's always domain seizures.
then i will agree that the US is like 1920s germany.
not saying it couldnt happen. just saying... im not convinced. WWI was fundamental to the german experience in the 20s, with masses of ex soldiers bitter and angry at society.
we do not have masses of ex soldiers - they make up a tiny percentage of the US population. there are unlikely to be putsches by people who spend their late teens playing skyrim instead of being involved in trench warfare and forced to starve on the street unless they join some paramilitary brigade.
The truth is that in countries like this, all you need to do is throw a few shiny dollars the way of the police and nobody will ever enforce the law. I highly doubt such a small country has the necessary resources to enforce something so insane anyway.
"The most dangerous enemy of a better solution is an existing codebase that is just good enough." -- Eric S. Raymond
Opposite-hand is probably identifiable too, but it's excruciatingly slow to write.
Well you don't have to do it all at once. I mean, do your first draft in normal handwriting so you can get your thoughts down quickly (have a lighter handy in case you need to burn it though!). Then, either you or a cohort use opposite-hand writing to rewrite the paper.
And as you pointed out, typewritten text can be tracked to the typewriter that wrote it. With handwriting, surely they didn't have a national database of everyone's handwriting to compare against (and definitely not opposite-hand). Unless they had their eyes on you already, intentionally bad handwriting should be pretty good for anonymity, whereas it's easy for a repressive government to track typewriter sales. After all, how are they going to figure out which of 10+ million people is the suspect just based on handwriting? Now of course, if you're already suspected of being a subversive, it'd be harder, but still it isn't that hard to forge someone else's handwriting. Sure, it's slow, but are you writing a novel the size of War and Peace or just an article for Der Spiegel?
This is not a Godwin. 1920 Germany was a country in a big crisis that had a lot of debts because they were in war before. That triggered a hyperinflation and a lot of radical political moves, but it wasn't anywhere near the situation Godwin is all about.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
The law is not balanced. It would mean that websites of Visa, MasterCard, Skype, websites of foreign banks, where many influential people have got accounts, would be illegal.
You probably will not, unless it leads to increased taxes it is not something of wide interest for that lobbying group.
A quick search shows various Tea Party local groups against it, such as http://clevelandteapartypatriots.blogspot.com/2011/12/obamacare-for-internet-stop-sopa-now.html
We saw on TV that leaders are skiing in European countries, for example, in Austria. How can they go there without using foreign websites to book a hotel or an airline ticket? Without using foreign payment systems, which also do have websites?
Or it will be again like in the USSR: all people are equal, but some are more equal?
Since there are no DNS servers in Belarus, apparently they are not allowed to use URL with non-numeric host parts.
I really wish I had a magic wand so I could selectively grant people what they ask for in _full_measure.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
_eventually_ we will use the following system for DNS:
(1) A DHT that anybody can add records too. There can be as many entries for MacDonalds.com as people care to add.
(2) DHT participants will use rotating port numbers as both servers and clients.
(3) Most participants will encrypt all inter-hash-node traffic.
(4) "Real" (e.g. useful) DNS entries will actually be found by Public (e.g. PGP) Key Fingerprint (or even full key).
(5) Key or Key Fingerprint records will automatically be pruned and rejected from the DHT if the are not signed by the public key referenced by the fingerprint or key they claim to represent.
(6) A key record may contain aliases to alias itself out to names like MacDonalds.com
(7) in most cases the so-called "top level domains" will be meaningless and you will only see MacDonalds.
(at this point, nobody has to "control" the DNS records. name records are advisory and signed records are of "higher quality".
(8) Banks and real institutions will regularly use QRCode, and physical tokens, and Apps, and App Tokens to pass PGP Key Fingerprint style host-part URLs around. (And maybe people will start using their home-pages and bookmarks for their original purpose, to keep an online repository of links useful to themselves as opposed to others.)
(9) "Smart" clients will require the information comming from a site to be signed with the key issued to the DNS record.
(10) There will be key echanges built in, by RFC or by common use of X- headers, to most non-trivial network requests such that each respondent will be provided wiht the key to use to encrypt the message body to the peer. In particular it will be de-regur to encrypt the first request sent via a key-located DNS record with the body encrypted uing the key from the DNS record. The first message will include his own public key in the encrypted body and the server will respond by creating a session with the associated key(s) and so forth.
(11) Someone will introduce "keyed:" as a transfer prototype where it is essentially defined as identical to "http:" but the entire message stream is encrypted in both directions, the initiator must determine the key to use before transit (see the DHT and other public key repositories) and any message may include a key to set/change the key for future messages in that stream.
(12) Trusted sub-communities will form inside corporations and associations where inter-DHT-participants will pass initialization keys around on QRCode business cards. The sub communities will export their record groups but selectively filter imports and only from "high quality" peers. This last bit will be to prevent DOS "malicious record submission" attacks. Eventualy this will be used to get around the government firewalls as getting a 3x5 card into the hands of one dissident will be enough to establish a fresh sub-community on a wholly different set of transit particulars over the same system.
(13) Modems will make a limited come-back to provide the out-of-band handshakes for final key validation etc. ...
Oh it will take a while, and the first implementations will be slapped onto the side of the bittorrent "magnet link" facility and so on, but one abuse at a time the free part of the internet will adopt it, and then some cutting edges companies will jump on thinking to "capture" the "fringe market" and it will all come to pass.
I like inventing systems like this, and this system would be almost trivial to code using existing bittorrent DHTs etc, but coding them is tedious, so the first implementation(s( are left as a excercise for the reader.
Trivial details may vary.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
Yes, that's right. Because Romney, Ron Paul, Gingrich, et al were all sentenced to 16 years in prison for running against Obama in the next elections.
Don't be silly.
I'll take my chances then.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law
"While falling foul of Godwin's law tends to cause the individual making the comparison to lose their argument and/or credibility, Godwin's law itself can be abused as a distraction, diversion or even as censorship, fallaciously miscasting an opponent's argument as hyperbole when the comparisons made by the argument are actually appropriate.[10] Similar criticisms of the "law" (or "at least the distorted version which purports to prohibit all comparisons to German crimes") have been made by Glenn Greenwald.[11]"
From what I remember of civics class, It's good that we are not a true democracy, otherwise we'd be suffering from "Tyranny of the masses". Which, after witnessing how many Americans believe in god and that they are superior to everyone in other countries, frankly scares me.
The good news is that this is unsustainable and will ultimately collapse. A country that tries to protect its authority by blinding itself to the worlds advance, is operationally doomed. It might take a year, it might take a couple generations, but such a country can't compete at any level on a world market, and will have less and less to offer as one by one they deplete their natural resources.
The bad news is that before they fold, a lot of innocent people are going to suffer horribly. Sadly, the kinds of things one can do to try to remedy such a problem child are few, and will have limited impact.
The ugly part of this mess is the complex relationship between Russia, Belarus, and the rest of eastern and western Europe. Many of the complexities of oil trade and other less legal trade going in and coming out of Slavic countries are bolstering these dictatorial regimes. Its perhaps time to question any kind of trade with a nation that eat its own young.
It can be argued that the constitution limited the powers of the states well before the 14th amendment. An example of this is that the states can't declare war. So, establishing the federal government pretty much sets limits on the states by default. Since the states ratified the constitution, they agreed to limit their powers in line with the federal government framework.
That being said, the 14th amendment was quite a power grab, albeit a necessary one at the time.
Do DHL do rape and pillage express deliveries?
I know tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack.
That is the argument of fascists, right wingers, conservatives and freedom-haters over the ages. Well done for parrotting a trite argument foisted on you by your economic and political masters.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I guess there won't be any WOW players in Belarus
Every cloud has a silver lining.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
The text of the law (in Russian) is available here: http://www.pravo.by/pdf/2011-134/2011-134(010-029).pdf (first page, registration number 2/1869).
Google translation of subject matter bellow:
"Article 22.16. Violation of requirements for the use of the national segment
Internet
1. To work on the sale of goods, works and
services in the territory of the Republic of Belarus with the use of information networks,
and resources with an Internet connection is not located on the territory of the Republic of Belarus and (or) not registered in the prescribed manner -
punishable by a fine for an individual entrepreneur or legal entity
in size from ten to thirty basic values.
2. Violation of the requirements of legislation to implement the identification
subscriber units in the provision of Internet services and (or) users of Internet services
points of the collective use of the web services, recording and storing information about the subscriber's devices, personal data of users of Internet services, as well as information about Internet services rendered -
punishable by a fine of from five to fifteen basic values.
3. Breach of the law to restrict user access inernet services to the information gap for distribution in accordance with
legislation -
punishable by a fine for an individual entrepreneur or legal entity
in size from ten to thirty base units.. "
So, I don't see the problem for person in Belarus to log into amazon or gmail as long, as it is performed for personal, educational or other non-commertial purposes. Problems starts if you want to do business and your systems are outside of the country. And this most likely affects businesspeople from other countries visiting .by.
Of course, it is Belarus. And how widely this law will be [ab]used remains to be seen.
It seems to be a mistranslation of the Russian original, which only makes Internet cafe owners guilty of violating the law if they allow their users to access (and do not report if accessed) websites that are specifically banned according to court decision because of "extremist" materials or pornography. There is a distinct provision that further requires providers to "identify users and equipment" and to "log activity" (regardless of materials visited; it also says nothing about "reporting to authority"), and makes them liable if they do not make this happen. However, there's nothing in there saying that any foreign website is banned.
Gotta love it when news articles are just downright wrong because journalists are incompetent.