Many of the posters on indymedia are NUJ members - this makes them journalists. Therefore indymedia is a journalistic group.
That doesn't follow. By the same logic, you could argue that the NUJ cricket team is a journalistic group. Being composed of journalists is not enough to make your enterprise journalistic. You need to demonstrate good journalistic practice (such as double sourcing, not in wide evidence at Indymedia) and at least a smattering of ethics (ditto). Every jobbing journalist who posts a story to IM would've sold it to a newspaper if he or she had sufficient supporting evidence to get it past the newspapers lawyers.
However, since most journalists would rather sit in a pub discussing how great they are, IM offers a useful outlet for those too lazy to do the legwork.
So you think that every crime that is posted on indymedia (I think there are a lot) should be dealt with by the police?
I think that every violent crime committed should be investigated by the police to the full extent of their powers.
I've no problem with Indymedia's initial refusal, or the police's eventual action. Strikes me, that what's happened here is precisely the way it should function. Indymedia wanted -- nay, demanded -- due process, and that's exactly what they got. They should be pleased that the judicial checks and balances on police power are working perfectly.
1. They are a journalist group, therefore have journalistic privelidge and do not have to release sources of articles
Only to the extent that every other blogger is. You can repeat this all you like, it ain't gonna fly.
It is against their policies to hand out peoples details to the police (to cover all eventualities)
That's a nice policy. Unfortunately withholding evidence about a crime is itself a crime.
This is the good one! They don't keep IP logs?
Cool. The police will check this, then hand the servers back. The police won't get what they want, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be allowed to look. I'm rather glad the police that the police don't simply believe any Tom, Dick or Harry about the existence (or not) of evidence.
Especially people with the same casual relationship to honesty that indymedia has.
but responsible journalists do not allow anonymous, unchecked "facts" into their news output.
You mean like the BBC did? As pointed out by the Hutton enquiry?
Yes. Exactly like that. And that particular bit of irresponsible journalism by Gilligan cost the BBC an enormous amount, whereas if he'd stuck to the stuff he could verify with double sourcing, he'd have had the government by the short and curlies.
Irresponsible journalism damages the cause of responsible journalism. Hutton demonstrated that admirably, because it allowed the government to switch the focus from the fact they'd lied, to the fact that Gilligan lied.
Which would be to copy, or possibly seize, the drive.
Oh, sure. But the kind of police officer who goes to enforce contested search warrants is not the kind who's gonna want to spend half an hour carefully removing a drive (especially given the legal technicalities of evidence handling imposed by PACE), when it's far more easy to take the whole box back to the lab and let an expert work on it.
Ask any lawyer : once you refuse to cooperate with the police, they lose any interest in making your life any easier than they're legally obliged to. Quid pro quo.
Correct Communist Troll. Indymedia is independent in the same way that Fox is fair and balanced. Which is why smart people laugh at both, rather than scorn Fox and praise IM.
I do not think the law does (or can) differentiate between responsible and iresponsible journalists.
No, but they can distinguish between those who pay lip service to journalist convention and technique, and a group of bloggers, who are claiming to be journalists (and I'm not saying they aren't, necessarily). Presumably, as the law distinguishes between journalists and non-journalists, they have some mechanism to distinguish between the two. I'd be intrigued to see how they claim that boasting about vandalism constitutes journalism.
In any case if you think that, you could not possibly have read the British tabloid newspapers any time in, say, the last century or so.
Well I try not to:) As Kingsley Amis once said "Laziness has become the defining characteristic of British journalism -- replacing incompetence."
Suppose the Police seized the printing presses of the Sun newspaper because a letter to the editor contained some nasty words
Shockingly bad analogy, because the presses don't contain information that would be useful, like IP logs or fingerprints.
PS : ever wonder why every national UK newspaper has a clause that says something like "correspondence intended for publication must contain your full address and daytime phone number." Well now you know why.
It is not necessary to seize anything to do this. At most all they need to do is mirror the drive, which can be done without even removing it.
They asked nicely for the logs, and explained why. Indymedia refused, because... well, that's the kind of people they are. So the police took the next procedural step, because that's the kind of people they are.
The police hauled in the server on which the guy who commited the crime left evidence. Evidence gathering... it's an important part of police work, donchaknow.
The police nabbed the server because someone boasted of violent criminal behaviour on it, and the police want to trace them.
Suppose a kidnapper used my typewriter to write a ransom note. Would my freedom of speech be curtailed if the police took it down the station to dust it for prints?
Someone commits a crime, and boasts about it on IndyMedia. The police haul in their server, probably hoping to arrest the dickwads who dropped concrete from a bridge onto a train, endangering lives in the name of "protest".
I'll bet you $100 dollars this has been seized for evidentiary purposes, in an attempt to trace the IP addresses of these hooligans, so they can be arrested. And I say "good", because the sort of cocksuckers who drop concrete weights onto trains deserve to go to prison.
on approx 17 June an anonymous post to the Bristol Indymedia
I hope they get their kit back, but I think this "journalist" defence won't have any legs. There may well be excellent journalists working for indymedia, but responsible journalists do not allow anonymous, unchecked "facts" into their news output.
In fact, that just encourages scurrilous rumor mongering -- which is diametrically opposed to good journalism.
"One cannot hope to bribe or twist,
Thank God, the British journalist.
But seeing what the man will do
Unbribed, there's no occasion to."
It shouldn't matter that they *encouraged* users to commit copyright infringement using their product. They, in fact, did not commit the crime, the user downloading the copyrighted material did.
Except... encouraging other people to commit crimes is itself a crime. And so Grokster have commited a crime (that's why Mafia bosses go to prison when it's underlings who've actually whacked the guy). And so your entire argument is completely wrong: factually, intellectually and morally.
Excel is an excellent spreadsheet (or at least it was the last time I used it, about 5 years ago). Imperfect, but really, really good. IMHO Excel '97 is still a better piece of software than any FOSS spreadsheet available for Linux.
The ad's in Britain are hysterical too. Not least becaused they're voiced by chat show host / movie reviewer Johnathon Ross, who has a radio show in which he's in the habit of mentioning the most recent bootleg DVD's he's bought.
I think we can honestly say this service doesn't care where they pull the information from (although it would be hard to keep track of it all of it, but that's only a side issue). Isn't this the basis of copyright -- credits and permission?!
No. Copyright is concerned with the expression of ideas, not ideas themselves. You only have a legal claim if you're patented being an annoying, angst ridden teenager. In which case, my parents can cite plenty of prior art dating back my, ahem, uncomfortable adolescence.
Slashdot Mirror
However, since most journalists would rather sit in a pub discussing how great they are, IM offers a useful outlet for those too lazy to do the legwork.
I think that every violent crime committed should be investigated by the police to the full extent of their powers.
Hey, that's cool.
I've no problem with Indymedia's initial refusal, or the police's eventual action. Strikes me, that what's happened here is precisely the way it should function. Indymedia wanted -- nay, demanded -- due process, and that's exactly what they got. They should be pleased that the judicial checks and balances on police power are working perfectly.
Especially people with the same casual relationship to honesty that indymedia has.
Irresponsible journalism damages the cause of responsible journalism. Hutton demonstrated that admirably, because it allowed the government to switch the focus from the fact they'd lied, to the fact that Gilligan lied.
Ask any lawyer : once you refuse to cooperate with the police, they lose any interest in making your life any easier than they're legally obliged to. Quid pro quo.
Correct Communist Troll. Indymedia is independent in the same way that Fox is fair and balanced. Which is why smart people laugh at both, rather than scorn Fox and praise IM.
PS : ever wonder why every national UK newspaper has a clause that says something like "correspondence intended for publication must contain your full address and daytime phone number." Well now you know why.
They asked for the logs. They didn't get them, so they went to a judge and got a search warrant instead. Completely correct procedure.
Note the qualifier responsible. Millions of journalists do this every day. But none of them is behaving responsibly when they do so.
The police hauled in the server on which the guy who commited the crime left evidence. Evidence gathering ... it's an important part of police work, donchaknow.
The police nabbed the server because someone boasted of violent criminal behaviour on it, and the police want to trace them.
Suppose a kidnapper used my typewriter to write a ransom note. Would my freedom of speech be curtailed if the police took it down the station to dust it for prints?
Don't get your panties in a wad, folks.
Someone commits a crime, and boasts about it on IndyMedia. The police haul in their server, probably hoping to arrest the dickwads who dropped concrete from a bridge onto a train, endangering lives in the name of "protest".
I'll bet you $100 dollars this has been seized for evidentiary purposes, in an attempt to trace the IP addresses of these hooligans, so they can be arrested. And I say "good", because the sort of cocksuckers who drop concrete weights onto trains deserve to go to prison.
In fact, that just encourages scurrilous rumor mongering -- which is diametrically opposed to good journalism.
"One cannot hope to bribe or twist,
Thank God, the British journalist.
But seeing what the man will do
Unbribed, there's no occasion to."
Grokster lost because the vociferously promoted piracy.
(OMG : someone's use the word "vociferously" correctly on
Sod Paycheck. Stick Robocop in as the best Dick novel Dick never wrote.
Excel is an excellent spreadsheet (or at least it was the last time I used it, about 5 years ago). Imperfect, but really, really good. IMHO Excel '97 is still a better piece of software than any FOSS spreadsheet available for Linux.
The ad's in Britain are hysterical too. Not least becaused they're voiced by chat show host / movie reviewer Johnathon Ross, who has a radio show in which he's in the habit of mentioning the most recent bootleg DVD's he's bought.
I block any adverts that distract me from the text I'm trying to read. That means, flashing, animations, pop-ups and pop-unders get blocked.
Anything non-distracting doesn't get blocked. It probably doesn't get read, either, but not even DoubleClick are suggesting making that profitable.
Note to DoubleClick : The web existed before you, and will long after you've gone the way of the Dodo.
Because I'm starting an international chain of fast food hamburger restaurants, but I'm not looking to compete with McDonalds and Burger King.