So the question is, as always, what should be done? Would we be better off, if there were no legal system? Should there be someone superior who would make things right for the little globo-citizen?? Propably no. The _system_ is the correct one in general terms, in democracies. It's the application that has number of bugs.
As more or less everyone is saying here, it should be a foregone conclusion, that having people vote in their homes, workplaces or cafes is counterproductive. To say the least.
However, if we (as the people) want to have a easy channel to voice our opinions more or less constantly about the various policy proposals, then we could use the internet voting systems as described here. These would act as official opinion polls, not binding decision making mechanisms. Advisory, that is, so the vote buying/tampering/whatever would not be that tempting.
In this scheme the sample would be very large, and calculations to neutralize the effects of various usage patterns could be easily made. Oh why? Well, this kind of system would have to be connected to the official identity database which in turn could be connected to the tax agency's databases. So the information would be as accurate as it can be.
to retain the same rights that you have that are in place largely to protect the little guy?
This is a bit off the topic, but as far as I know in the European Union competition law there are exemptions from some legislation unless the company is "too big". For example, "too big" companies cannot legally use some marketing strategies like buing off space from stores to keep smaller competitors out.
I cannot remember the exact percentages, but in the case of MS they clearly have too much market power. This is one of the reasons why MS has gotten in some provisional trouble with EU Competition Commissioner.
This is one of those times I'm glad not to live in the EU.
Not that the EU is the paradise, but you should know that the EU has nothing to do with this French affair. However, what we Europeans have to do is to do our utmost to stop this kind of policy migrating to the European level.
I can see the risk, since this could be an internal market issue since the French cannot enforce this law because of the
Schengen treaty which stipulates that there are no border controls between most (continental) EU countries. This means that all the French consumer has to do is to take a train (or whatever) and go to Belgium or some other country - even to Germany with its lower HDD tax.. No problems since there are no border controls! Therefore in this case the EU is actually good for the French people (and Belgian businesses, too..)
From the French point of view there would be a need to get this kind of legistlation to the European level. Stopping this propably would not be that hard, because this is a taxation issue in which the decisions in EU level would have to be taken in unanimity.
So for the time being we can all enjoy seeing the French government getting embarassed, big time!
And while I can see a university refusing to let a professor look up porn, its probably because he's being contraversial. And then he can look it up From Home. Just like the rest of us.
If it is justified to ban "controversial" person's access to "controversial" material, what would be left of the concept of free speech?
Not much, I think.. Because this would mean that in the scholar environment only staff that sucks up to the dep't head can do their research in some "controversial" issue. And that is a start of a system that resembles China's and others' - only respected people can view "objective" material.
Again, it's about the non-trivial issue of who defines the relevant concepts in the real world.
The article says, that the system incorporates 40 categories of undesirable activity. Now, this is the most scary part of it all - how does the system, and finally the people who work for this company, determine what is good and bad?
If they do the classification only for purposes of throwing up rough statistics, fine. But if sites / information connected to a actual person leads to some sort of retribution from either companies/empolyers/ISPs or the law enforcement this becomes an issue of constitutional rights.
If these acts are even initially based on determinations of a private company, this should be banned. Making content illegal is the business of democratically elected bodies with constitutional safeguards.
One of the main reasons cellular is slow to catch up in the states is the policy of cell phone owner paying for the call when he answers the phone.
So people are reluctant to use the cellular which lowers the revenue providers get and forces them to have obviously inpenetrable call plans and ultimately high prices. Another reason for the confusion and high prices is the bundling of phones and actual telephony services. Competition gets seriously impaired.
Here in Finland this is forbidden by the law, which is one reason for our penetration rates. Another is low pricing (5 US cents per minute with 3 US dollars monthly fee at the lowest) which partially follows from gov't policy of not charging for the licences to provide these services. Same goes with Sweden, so here you go..
The average customer has to feel secure about understanding pricing to really use these devices.
Oh, and I could get ADSL in two weeks max if I wanted..
Linking shall never be seriously inhibited, since as we all know, the commercial services are financed by clickable banners. Therefore all the safe, center of the opinionspan type of linking is fine.
However, there are risks: First of all, if the responsibility of content expands to the person who put a banner on her site, adveritising for pr0n-related sites could be threatened, especially if there would be strict local (eg. Utah) content restrictions.
This leads to a more general risk - the necessity to self censor. And that is truly dangerous, since the webmaster cannot in any case know every piece of copyrighted material on Earth..
This news is just another way of seeing how far back the American market is in mobiles.
In Finland this SMS-spam phenomenon happened about two years ago, when people started to get oddly hot messages offering phone-sex services in regulation free countries.
What happened? A huge outcry followed by stricter regulation and apparently some filtering at the MSP-level.
Does Sprint et al use WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) to provide these services or do they use "straight" HTML??
Furthermore, does WAP protocol enable giving out unique identifiers, or has this been surpassed at the wireless service provider level?? As much as I know, WAP services are always for a fee, so the WAP service provider has to be able to track customers usage. This is propably most relevant in a situation, where a third party WAP service provider provides its services directly to customers' phones.
Anyway, I'm guessing here. Does anyone know these issues? -mjpk
As a Euro I initially thought that this is sad, but who cares, it's Utah/US.. my gov't hasn't thrown up such regulative iniatives.
However, this US approach is having an indirect effect on the rest of the World. The process is very subtle, since it works through the freedom of information aspect of the wider freedom of speech.
When the citizen's of Utah get misinformed or they lack important information, the global exchange of ideas gets more and more difficult. Some have called this process Balkanisation of (in this case global) society.
Now, this propably does not have serious direct effects, since there is little discussion on values between, say, citizens of Utah and citizens of Sweden. However, this process can change the face and values of US leadership (Congress/president), and that can be dangerous! It can lead to US trying to impose some of its more conservative minority's values on both its own and other people.
And that has potential to disrupt commerce and responsible political cooperation. Surely this would not be good for our otherwise fledgling democracies and freedoms.
Disclamer: I'm not saying that things are that much better in Europe in general. What I've described is a process, that can by tilting values initially cause a snowball-effect in a very large scale.
There is no body that can convict the US Gov't, save the US Court system (to give financial awards out) and France can hardly sue the US for International espionage.
This might be true. However, Echelon is supposed to be a collaboration between various countries, including the UK.
This means that Echelon is subject to the EU legislation. One EU member state spying on other member state surely violates EU internal market rules. Also the emerging 3rd Pillar (Home and Justice Affairs) at least implicitly forbids such a behaviour. The violation of internal market rules, however, are the most serious, since those matters fall in the competence of independent European Communities Court of Justice (which is btw. about only EU institution carrying the acronym EC..).
If UK gets convicted in ECJ (which would take a s**tload of time), it has absolutely no way to refute the ruling. For a system like Echelon this would propably be quite harmful, since the system needs a physical location in Europe.
There is also another fact that could make things more hot between EU and the US: The European Parliament subscribed Echelon report, which will be released on 22nd this month. If the EP really gets pissed, it can block future trade deals between US and EU. In addition to that the on-going competition cases could get more backing..
In summarum: The US is not 100% immune of what the poor idiot Europeans are doing..
And besides, what an Earth the UK gov't has been thinking, if they supported the spying of the Airbus Consortium?? The Airbus was and is 25% owned by UK company named British Aerospace..
Sweden does have it's problems. Like any country that is faced with a fall in wealth (from the top to the bottom of the OECD in 25 years), and large social shifts from an extremely homogenus population to one of Europes most culturally diverse (of course, I believe this to be a good thing), we have our fair share of both segregation and bitterness.
As an outsider, I feel that there migth be another explanation for the Swedish far right.
Sweden has portrayed itself as the consciousness of the world for years. (and IMHO, this is all for the good, although sometimes a bit hypocratic). Maybe the neo-nazi movement is a backlash towards this prevalent attitude.
Sweden is - still, I believe - a welfare state. It appears that the neo-nazis want to keep the benefits without the philosophical package.
When this ends up to calls for censorship, I think that the potential regulators should understand that information is best fought with information. Other means just add to the fire - especially on the long run!
And Sweden seems to have taken this approach with its holocaust information campaign. We on the other side of the Gulf of Bothnia are following suite.
Now, it's clear that identity theft and abuse should not be allowed. Clearly Prodigy acted accordingly when it found out about the problem, and this is the procedure that should prevail.
If we wanted to prevent the possibility to use a fake identity to happen, the measures needed would be quite farreaching. I don't claim to be an expert, but it seems that the only way to accomplish this would be to mandate everyone about sign in to the message boards, use some secure digital signature. This signature naturally would have to be recognised by some gov't organisation to make sure that the signature would correspond to an actual identity.
That, if anything, is a threat to our privacy, since if a government organ has 100% sure information about your identity, it could trace your tracks around the Net.
This case would not necesserily be that dramatic in "democracies" where free speech and freedom of opinion are quite guarded. However, this kind of system would be a god-send to any gov't that would for example guard its national security with jelousness. Previous/. articles about Australia and Britain surely don't give too much hope???
So, if this kind of regime would be implemented, the Right for Identity would have its meaning reversed to the Curse of Identity.
Also the Convention covers rights for a fair trial, which should be even more powerful argument if this stupid law ever ends up in the courts.
Also the EU legislation may prove problematic towards proposed rules, since the UK businesses could claim that the rules are in breach of common market's equal competition rules. This is a long shot, though..
The Man sure has said otherwise.. however there is a European Court of Human Rights to which every citizen of signatory nations have a full right of appeal. Court's decisions are binding to the gov'ts.
Unfortunate is the Court's line, that especially in terms of freedom of expression local cultural definitions of objectionable expression have in many cases been upheld. But on the other hand there have been encourageing rulings, too. But that is the caveat of international aka intergovernmental systems..
So, the Charter is not purely useless stack of A4. Rather it is a basis for citizens to act, without documents like that we would be even worse off..
The facts are not quite as you stated.. in fact the EU has no charter of human rights. The treaty you are referring to is the Council of Europe's convention of human rights and fundamental freedoms.
The Council has no official connection to the Union as the Council has far greater number of members (inc. Russia) and is strictly an intergovernmential organisation.
However, the EU has quite officially recognized aforementioned Convention to form a binding standard to the the EU legistlation. Furthermore, EU has based on the Convention started to form its own charter of fundamental rights to be included to the Union treaties (those are the ones unanimously agreed by members in European Councils..confusing.. that can be seen as the EU Constitution - eg. Treaty of Rome).
Committees;) and timetables have been formed, although unfortunately the results may not initially end up in the founding treaties - some gov'ts think that's too federalist.
Btw, I also think, that us Euros value privacy highly. However I hope that this isn't just a publicity stunt that has been designed to increase to the pile of disagreements between the US and EU, amount of which has increased as EU has gained in intergration and influence. But if the cause is real, I applaud..
Below is a link to the full text of the Convention and the privacy clause:
Article 8 footnote 1 - Right to respect for private and family life
1 Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.
2 There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.
Right.. the companies have share holders to cater to. The more viruses, the higher the share price.
This from Finland, where the principle owner of Data Fellows suddenly became nation's second richest person after an IPO just days ago. Suspicious minds again wonder about various meanings of shareholder value.
Slashdot Mirror
So the question is, as always, what should be done? Would we be better off, if there were no legal system? Should there be someone superior who would make things right for the little globo-citizen?? Propably no. The _system_ is the correct one in general terms, in democracies. It's the application that has number of bugs.
However, if we (as the people) want to have a easy channel to voice our opinions more or less constantly about the various policy proposals, then we could use the internet voting systems as described here. These would act as official opinion polls, not binding decision making mechanisms. Advisory, that is, so the vote buying/tampering/whatever would not be that tempting.
In this scheme the sample would be very large, and calculations to neutralize the effects of various usage patterns could be easily made. Oh why? Well, this kind of system would have to be connected to the official identity database which in turn could be connected to the tax agency's databases. So the information would be as accurate as it can be.
So how's that - the perfect poll democracy?
-miKa-
This is a bit off the topic, but as far as I know in the European Union competition law there are exemptions from some legislation unless the company is "too big". For example, "too big" companies cannot legally use some marketing strategies like buing off space from stores to keep smaller competitors out.
I cannot remember the exact percentages, but in the case of MS they clearly have too much market power. This is one of the reasons why MS has gotten in some provisional trouble with EU Competition Commissioner.
But correct me if I'm wrong..
-miKa
Not that the EU is the paradise, but you should know that the EU has nothing to do with this French affair. However, what we Europeans have to do is to do our utmost to stop this kind of policy migrating to the European level.
I can see the risk, since this could be an internal market issue since the French cannot enforce this law because of the Schengen treaty which stipulates that there are no border controls between most (continental) EU countries. This means that all the French consumer has to do is to take a train (or whatever) and go to Belgium or some other country - even to Germany with its lower HDD tax.. No problems since there are no border controls! Therefore in this case the EU is actually good for the French people (and Belgian businesses, too..)
From the French point of view there would be a need to get this kind of legistlation to the European level. Stopping this propably would not be that hard, because this is a taxation issue in which the decisions in EU level would have to be taken in unanimity.
So for the time being we can all enjoy seeing the French government getting embarassed, big time!
-miKa-
If it is justified to ban "controversial" person's access to "controversial" material, what would be left of the concept of free speech?
Not much, I think.. Because this would mean that in the scholar environment only staff that sucks up to the dep't head can do their research in some "controversial" issue. And that is a start of a system that resembles China's and others' - only respected people can view "objective" material.
Again, it's about the non-trivial issue of who defines the relevant concepts in the real world.
-miKa
If they do the classification only for purposes of throwing up rough statistics, fine. But if sites / information connected to a actual person leads to some sort of retribution from either companies/empolyers/ISPs or the law enforcement this becomes an issue of constitutional rights.
If these acts are even initially based on determinations of a private company, this should be banned. Making content illegal is the business of democratically elected bodies with constitutional safeguards.
So people are reluctant to use the cellular which lowers the revenue providers get and forces them to have obviously inpenetrable call plans and ultimately high prices. Another reason for the confusion and high prices is the bundling of phones and actual telephony services. Competition gets seriously impaired.
Here in Finland this is forbidden by the law, which is one reason for our penetration rates. Another is low pricing (5 US cents per minute with 3 US dollars monthly fee at the lowest) which partially follows from gov't policy of not charging for the licences to provide these services. Same goes with Sweden, so here you go..
The average customer has to feel secure about understanding pricing to really use these devices.
Oh, and I could get ADSL in two weeks max if I wanted..
msfin@microsoft.com
Flaming is not productive since MS surely uses the most effective filters available - Bill's Brains(TM)..
Anyway, when I was trying to view the page, IE froze up. I'm suspicious - does he read my mind? Well, thank heavens for Mozilla.
-miKa
However, there are risks: First of all, if the responsibility of content expands to the person who put a banner on her site, adveritising for pr0n-related sites could be threatened, especially if there would be strict local (eg. Utah) content restrictions.
This leads to a more general risk - the necessity to self censor. And that is truly dangerous, since the webmaster cannot in any case know every piece of copyrighted material on Earth..
This news is just another way of seeing how far back the American market is in mobiles.
In Finland this SMS-spam phenomenon happened about two years ago, when people started to get oddly hot messages offering phone-sex services in regulation free countries.
What happened? A huge outcry followed by stricter regulation and apparently some filtering at the MSP-level.
-mjpk
Furthermore, does WAP protocol enable giving out unique identifiers, or has this been surpassed at the wireless service provider level?? As much as I know, WAP services are always for a fee, so the WAP service provider has to be able to track customers usage. This is propably most relevant in a situation, where a third party WAP service provider provides its services directly to customers' phones.
Anyway, I'm guessing here. Does anyone know these issues? -mjpk
However, this US approach is having an indirect effect on the rest of the World. The process is very subtle, since it works through the freedom of information aspect of the wider freedom of speech.
When the citizen's of Utah get misinformed or they lack important information, the global exchange of ideas gets more and more difficult. Some have called this process Balkanisation of (in this case global) society.
Now, this propably does not have serious direct effects, since there is little discussion on values between, say, citizens of Utah and citizens of Sweden. However, this process can change the face and values of US leadership (Congress/president), and that can be dangerous! It can lead to US trying to impose some of its more conservative minority's values on both its own and other people.
And that has potential to disrupt commerce and responsible political cooperation. Surely this would not be good for our otherwise fledgling democracies and freedoms.
Disclamer: I'm not saying that things are that much better in Europe in general. What I've described is a process, that can by tilting values initially cause a snowball-effect in a very large scale.
-miKa
This might be true. However, Echelon is supposed to be a collaboration between various countries, including the UK.
This means that Echelon is subject to the EU legislation. One EU member state spying on other member state surely violates EU internal market rules. Also the emerging 3rd Pillar (Home and Justice Affairs) at least implicitly forbids such a behaviour. The violation of internal market rules, however, are the most serious, since those matters fall in the competence of independent European Communities Court of Justice (which is btw. about only EU institution carrying the acronym EC..).
If UK gets convicted in ECJ (which would take a s**tload of time), it has absolutely no way to refute the ruling. For a system like Echelon this would propably be quite harmful, since the system needs a physical location in Europe.
There is also another fact that could make things more hot between EU and the US: The European Parliament subscribed Echelon report, which will be released on 22nd this month. If the EP really gets pissed, it can block future trade deals between US and EU. In addition to that the on-going competition cases could get more backing..
In summarum: The US is not 100% immune of what the poor idiot Europeans are doing..
And besides, what an Earth the UK gov't has been thinking, if they supported the spying of the Airbus Consortium?? The Airbus was and is 25% owned by UK company named British Aerospace..
-miKa
Sweden does have it's problems. Like any country that is faced with a fall in wealth (from the top to the bottom of the OECD in 25 years), and large social shifts from an extremely homogenus population to one of Europes most culturally diverse (of course, I believe this to be a good thing), we have our fair share of both segregation and bitterness.
As an outsider, I feel that there migth be another explanation for the Swedish far right.
Sweden has portrayed itself as the consciousness of the world for years. (and IMHO, this is all for the good, although sometimes a bit hypocratic). Maybe the neo-nazi movement is a backlash towards this prevalent attitude.
Sweden is - still, I believe - a welfare state. It appears that the neo-nazis want to keep the benefits without the philosophical package.
When this ends up to calls for censorship, I think that the potential regulators should understand that information is best fought with information. Other means just add to the fire - especially on the long run!
And Sweden seems to have taken this approach with its holocaust information campaign. We on the other side of the Gulf of Bothnia are following suite.
Now, it's clear that identity theft and abuse should not be allowed. Clearly Prodigy acted accordingly when it found out about the problem, and this is the procedure that should prevail.
/. articles about Australia and Britain surely don't give too much hope???
If we wanted to prevent the possibility to use a fake identity to happen, the measures needed would be quite farreaching. I don't claim to be an expert, but it seems that the only way to accomplish this would be to mandate everyone about sign in to the message boards, use some secure digital signature. This signature naturally would have to be recognised by some gov't organisation to make sure that the signature would correspond to an actual identity.
That, if anything, is a threat to our privacy, since if a government organ has 100% sure information about your identity, it could trace your tracks around the Net.
This case would not necesserily be that dramatic in "democracies" where free speech and freedom of opinion are quite guarded. However, this kind of system would be a god-send to any gov't that would for example guard its national security with jelousness. Previous
So, if this kind of regime would be implemented, the Right for Identity would have its meaning reversed to the Curse of Identity.
Also the Convention covers rights for a fair trial, which should be even more powerful argument if this stupid law ever ends up in the courts.
Also the EU legislation may prove problematic towards proposed rules, since the UK businesses could claim that the rules are in breach of common market's equal competition rules. This is a long shot, though..
-mjpk
The Man sure has said otherwise.. however there is a European Court of Human Rights to which every citizen of signatory nations have a full right of appeal. Court's decisions are binding to the gov'ts.
Unfortunate is the Court's line, that especially in terms of freedom of expression local cultural definitions of objectionable expression have in many cases been upheld. But on the other hand there have been encourageing rulings, too. But that is the caveat of international aka intergovernmental systems..
So, the Charter is not purely useless stack of A4. Rather it is a basis for citizens to act, without documents like that we would be even worse off..
-miKa
The facts are not quite as you stated.. in fact the EU has no charter of human rights. The treaty you are referring to is the Council of Europe's convention of human rights and fundamental freedoms.
..confusing.. that can be seen as the EU Constitution - eg. Treaty of Rome).
;) and timetables have been formed, although unfortunately the results may not initially end up in the founding treaties - some gov'ts think that's too federalist.
The Council has no official connection to the Union as the Council has far greater number of members (inc. Russia) and is strictly an intergovernmential organisation.
However, the EU has quite officially recognized aforementioned Convention to form a binding standard to the the EU legistlation. Furthermore, EU has based on the Convention started to form its own charter of fundamental rights to be included to the Union treaties (those are the ones unanimously agreed by members in European Councils
Committees
Btw, I also think, that us Euros value privacy highly. However I hope that this isn't just a publicity stunt that has been designed to increase to the pile of disagreements between the US and EU, amount of which has increased as EU has gained in intergration and influence. But if the cause is real, I applaud..
Below is a link to the full text of the Convention and the privacy clause:
CONVENTION FOR THE PROTECTION OF HUMAN RIGHTS AND FUNDAMENTAL FREEDOMS
Article 8 footnote 1 - Right to respect for private and family life
1 Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.
2 There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.
Right.. the companies have share holders to cater to. The more viruses, the higher the share price.
This from Finland, where the principle owner of Data Fellows suddenly became nation's second richest person after an IPO just days ago. Suspicious minds again wonder about various meanings of shareholder value.