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Australia Passes Law To Punish Social Media Companies For Violent Posts (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: Australia passed sweeping legislation Thursday that threatens huge fines for social media companies and jail for their executives (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source) if they fail to rapidly remove "abhorrent violent material" from their platforms. The law -- strongly opposed by the tech industry -- puts Australia at the forefront of a global movement to hold companies like Facebook and YouTube accountable for the content they host. It comes less than a month after a gunman, believed to be an Australian white nationalist, distributed a hate-filled manifesto online before using Facebook to live-stream the massacre of 50 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. Written quickly and without much input from technology companies or experts, the measure goes as far as any other democracy's attempt to punish multinational tech platforms for the behavior of their users. "The legislation criminalizes 'abhorrent violent material,' which it defines as videos that show terrorist attacks, murders, rape or kidnapping. Social media companies that fail to remove such content 'expeditiously' could face fines of up to 10 percent of their annual profit, and employees could be sentenced to up to three years in prison," the report adds. "Companies must also inform the police when illegal material is found."
"This law, which was conceived and passed in five days without any meaningful consultation, does nothing to address hate speech, which was the fundamental motivation for the tragic Christchurch terrorist attacks," said Sunita Bose, the managing director of the Digital Industry Group, an advocacy group representing Facebook, Google and other companies. "With the vast volumes of content uploaded to the internet every second, this is a highly complex problem that requires discussion with the technology industry, legal experts, the media and civil society to get the solution right -- that didn't happen this week."
"This law, which was conceived and passed in five days without any meaningful consultation, does nothing to address hate speech, which was the fundamental motivation for the tragic Christchurch terrorist attacks," said Sunita Bose, the managing director of the Digital Industry Group, an advocacy group representing Facebook, Google and other companies. "With the vast volumes of content uploaded to the internet every second, this is a highly complex problem that requires discussion with the technology industry, legal experts, the media and civil society to get the solution right -- that didn't happen this week."
I remember seeing movies of gross and violent murder, mass shootings, corpses piled up.
Something tells me these will not be banned.
There is but it doesn't matter; the act has to be a crime in both nations for it to qualify for extradition.
So, now we are outlawing specific kinds of speech? Danger is close.
Tread lightly. It's a really slippery slope when you start down this path and something I suggest we weigh carefully before reacting emotionally.
Where I'm all for avoiding things like yelling "fire in a theater" or "inflaming an actual riot" it's going to put us way out on the slippery slope to do this. I wonder if the risks are worth the sacrifice of freedom, if we can craft a narrow enough rule to fix the actual problem without sliding into full censorship... I'm not sure we can.
So, what rule are you suggesting here? Specifically what and what isn't allowed? What's the problem we are trying to fix?
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Oh yeah!
So that's why the 4th crusade conquered Constantinople...to punish those pesky muslims...oh wait!
Do you know that the Catholics apologised for this on numerous occasions?
Do you know that this vile act is considered the chief reason for the fall of the whole Empire to the Ottomans? Which removed my country from the map for 482 years!!
If only emperor Kaloyan had destroyed the fucking crusaders BEFORE they destroyed the riches city in the world....raping nuns on the altars....but alas he did not see the bigger danger and how could he, it took many years before it became apparent.
Not like khan Tervel who in the 7th century helped Constantinople against the islamic hordes who had a plan to close on Europe from Spain and Byzantium. They succeeded in the west but not in the east.
So, thank you crusaders for saying thank you to Byzantium and Bulgaria for saving all your Christian asses by pillaging, raping, burning and killing of your brothers and sisters by faith. The historians traveling with the crusaders admit that Orthodox Christians were treated worse than the Saracens.
BTW, I'm not excusing the Ottomans for any of their inhuman atrocities committed against us (ask the Armenians too).
Google Januarius McGahan and read....
BTW the NZ motherfucker had inscriptions in Cyrillic on the gun and cartridges mentioning the struggle of all if us East Europeans against the turks. Fuck him! Erdogan is a piece of shit but I refuse to hate an entire nation or religion because of some wrongdoing in the past. But I won't forget it either...
Read some history, man!
Christianity and all other modern religions underwent reformations in the past 15 centuries. Islam has not. It's just as backwards as it was centuries ago.
I studied Islam for over 20 years and I lived in the Middle East for four of them. It's a fact that the Quoran mandates violence against non-muslims.
You do not need to have lived in the Middle East for that. Just google the Quran: I mean, it's not like the whole thing isn't on the internet in various translations. Then, google "violent bits of the Quran" (or similar terms) to get pointers to which parts of it contain such material. Then read that. What you will find there really leaves nothing to the imagination. In a number of places violence against non-believers is explicitly mandated, with no wiggle room.
If this were any other text except the holy book of Muslims, it would be banned.
Misrepresent much???
My reading of the Quran tells me that violence is condoned in the event of an attack by an oppressive host which does not tolerate Islamic worship, and as retaliation for other acts of violence.
In the absence of such provocations, peace and amity are enjoined.
One could say that this policy matches that followed by the nation of Israel.
Either you are misrepresenting or you have not studied the matter fully.
There are over a billion Muslims. Mostly in India and Indonesia. If you don't think that the ones committing all the violence are a fringe group, then you are vastly underestimating the damage a billion people could do, if they really wanted to.
Based on polls, it isn't fringe group of muslims who support violence. By definition, fringe group would constitute a fraction of a percentage of the people. Here's just a sampling of the opinion polls:
Pew Global: 68% of Palestinian Muslims say suicide attacks against civilians in defense of Islam are justified.
43% of Nigerian Muslims say suicide attacks against civilians in defense of Islam are justified.
38% of Lebanese Muslims say suicide attacks against civilians in defense of Islam are justified.
15% of Egyptian Muslims say suicide attacks against civilians in defense of Islam are justified.
13% of Indonesian Muslims say suicide attacks against civilians in defense of Islam are justified.
12% of Jordanian Muslims say suicide attacks against civilians in defense of Islam are justified.
7% of Muslim Israelis say suicide attacks against civilians in defense of Islam are justified.
http://cnsnews.com/node/53865 (Pew Global Attitudes Project September, 2009)
Center for Social Cohesion: One Third of British Muslim students support killing for Islam (Wikileaks cable)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...
Policy Exchange: One third of British Muslims believe anyone who leaves Islam should be killed
http://www.civitas.org.uk/pdf/...
NOP Research: 78% of British Muslims support punishing the publishers of Muhammad cartoons;
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories...
http://www.webcitation.org/5xk...
NOP Research: Hardcore Islamists comprise 9% of Britain's Muslim population;
Another 29% would "aggressively defend" Islam;
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories...
http://www.webcitation.org/5xk...
Pew Research (2010): 84% of Egyptian Muslims support the death penalty for leaving Islam
86% of Jordanian Muslims support the death penalty for leaving Islam
30% of Indonesian Muslims support the death penalty for leaving Islam
76% of Pakistanis support death the penalty for leaving Islam
51% of Nigerian Muslims support the death penalty for leaving Islam
http://pewglobal.org/2010/12/0...
-- Will program for bandwidth
That's what the Old Testament (the Jewish Torah) teaches.
The New Testament that's the basis of Christianity overturns all those Old Testament rules and replaces them with a new one - "love one another." And no this doesn't mean just other Christians; it means everyone
(This is why I facepalm at Christians who try to put the Ten Commandments up on a pedestal, because clearly they haven't read the New Testament enough.)