Where Are You Publishing? 266
AndrewRUK writes "A reporter for The Guardian is being prosecuted in Zimbabwe for a report that appeared on the newspaper's website, the newspaper writes in this report. If the case is successful, it would allow Zimbabwe's courts to apply the country's draconian media laws to any online publisher, putting reporters and editors at risk of arrest if they go to Zimbabwe, or any country with extradition treaties with Zimbabwe.
Once again, we see a case which raises the question of which courts have jurisdiction over online publishing. Is a UK newspaper, with webservers in the UK, and a site accessable to anyone on the net, publishing only in the UK, or is it publishing everywhere where there's net access?" An issue that just doesn't seem to go away ...
Sklyarov (Score:4, Insightful)
Sounds almost like the Dmitry Sklyarov case...
If someone's stupid enough (Score:3, Insightful)
Interesting connection. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds a lot like the US and the Skylarov case huh?
Or DeCSS? Or any of the forthcoming lawsuits?
We are no better. I hate to say it, but it's true.
fault of Zimbabwe ISPs (Score:4, Insightful)
the material is available in print in England and on English computers; it is therefore the fault of Zimbabwe's ISPs for connecting to the offending servers.
if nations want to censor the internet, they should do it themselves. it would be funny to watch them realize the futility of attempting to stop information.
Consider the government... (Score:4, Insightful)
Why should it be at all surprising that he's willing to go after journalists who expose his regime? I suppose it is surprising to starry-eyed marxists who still buy into the collective bullshit of African anti-colonial revolution.
All the more shameful is Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu and the rest of the putatively democratic ANC's refusal to speak out against Mugabe and his thugs.
Maybe now that western journalists are actually starting to get a firsthand taste of Mugabe-style government they'll wipe the haze from their eyes and start doing the kind of reporting that might help bring an end to the politically correct refusal to believe that an African govenrment can do no wrong, especially if it involves whitey getting his.
Okay, then (Score:2, Insightful)
Robert Mugabe, dictator-in-chief of Zimbabwe, is a pusillanimous pipsqueak. His male member is dwarfed in comparison to his cockroach-sized brain. The stench of his breath makes granite crumble. His moral integrity is challenged only by that of a Microsoft lawyer. He rapes newborns with curling irons.
His government is composed entirely of weak-willed wusses, totally incapable of thinking for themselves. This, combined with Mr. Mugabe's stunning intellectual shortcomings, clearly explains the entire fiasco.
Need I continue?
b&
Hard to prove in the US; easy in many other places (Score:3, Insightful)
- Many countries have laws against libelling the government or the ruling party, which are infinitely abusable.
- Many British-derived legal systems don't do that, but do still make it easy for individuals to win libel cases.
US traditions are inherited from several cases in the British Colonies in North AmericaRe:Consider the government... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, it's pretty disappointing, but to be fair it's a lot easier to say those kinds of things when you don't have to live next door to them. The Australian government is, for instance, mealy-mouthed about Indonesia's corruption and thuggery, mainly because there are certain things we need from Indonesia (like not letting drug and people smugglers through, and shutting down Al-Queda cells there) and if we don't kiss their arse occasionally they are petulant enough to stop doing those things to spite us. Similar things probably apply WRT Zimbabwe and SA. They did have the courtesy to go along (once beaten round the head by the UK, NZ, and to a lesser extent Australia) with the suspension of Zimbabwe from the British Commonwealth (which says to the world that they now regard Zimbabwe as undemocratic).
Of course there's the issue that some in the ANC, whatever the leadership knows, probably have a sneaking sympathy for people sticking it to rich white landowners.
Ummmmm... (Score:4, Insightful)
Extradition (Score:3, Insightful)
Endemic + accelerating problem of communications (Score:3, Insightful)
Controlling public access to information is a much more resource-effective means of social control than direct military/police action, so it's especially serious for people like Mugabe, but it's a serious problem for governments everywhere. They have enough trouble dealing with effective postal systems and telegraphs, which can often communicate faster than censorship can react, but pre-Internet broadcast media such as traditional newspaper publishing and radio/tv cost enough that most broadcast news is local or at least controllable
- Newspapers cost enough and carry enough local news that most people read local papers, which can be censored or bullied, and occasional issues of wide-market papers like the NY or London Times or South China Morning Post can have their local distributions squelched for a day if needed
- Local radio and TV stations have been government-regulated in most jurisdictions, either as government-owned monopolies or at least licensed in ways that control content
- Short-wave broadcasting had largely been restricted by treaties, and mostly out-competed by television.
- The growth of satellite television in the last decade or so is a serious threat to government opinion control, but at least it's run by a few big corporations that tend to push hierarchical homogenized values and ignore local issues outside their owners' main markets, so it's a slower-moving threat that it could be - the real impact is often on cultural and economic values rather than directly rocking the boat.
But the Internet is just there - once you've got it, you've got access to everything and tools for finding the things you want, and language differences may fragment it somewhat, but not only does much of the world speak English, Chinese, Spanish, or French, but the expatriates that you most wish would stay away and leave you alone now have a much easier time reaching your subjects, speak your local languages, and care about your local issues.Even in more liberal countries that don't have vicious totalitarian-wannabee governments, the Internet is still disruptive to the cultural status-quo and sometimes to the government. Back during one of the Internet-rumormongering flaps (I forget if it was a Matt Drudge thing or a Who Shot Down TWA Flight 800 or some conspiracy thing), somebody asked Esther Dyson about the Internet encouraging this sort of thing, and she said that yes, it did, but that television was better for propaganda. We've seen a lot of resistance to Internet openness focused on cultural-value conflicts like pornography. In some places like the US, the issue might really *be* concern about pornography (e.g. Ashcroft covering up naked statues), but it's being used by other governments as an excuse to grab control of the Internet distribution before it totally gets out of hand - the Great Firewall of China and similar efforts are doomed in the long run, but it's about the only thing they can do if they want to keep any control over the information their people see.
Re:Background: Zimbabwe vs UK (Score:3, Insightful)
We need a cyber-jurisdiction (Score:3, Insightful)
Governments of the world need to wake up and realize that cyberspace (I hate that word) is just as real as the USA, Britain, Australia or any other country on the face of the planet.
What's needed are some "cyberspace treaties" that would work in much the same way as the various treaties that cover issues such as copyright, trademarks, patents, etc.
These treaties need only lay down the basic framework of laws needed to restrict users actions and preserve their rights while in "cyberspace."
If a country's right to connect to the Net was conditional on signing to such an treaty then we'd have a method of producing and enforcing consistent laws related to the Net and its (ab)use.
Stomping on spam would be a great start -- imagine if there were a set of basic anti-spamming laws to which all Net-connected countries had to agree to be bound (under threat of excommunication). When you got a spam from Korea -- you report the offense and if the Korean authorities were found to not be enforcing the law, they'd be in jeopardy of having the entire country disconnected.
Other important issues such as kiddy porn, defamation, etc could also be covered by such a treaty -- making it far easier to track down and arrest or extradite offenders.
Hey... the RIAA and MPAA seem to have been able to unofficially create just such a global network of enforcement -- so why can't the world's authorities and legislators watch and learn.
Don't get me wrong, I'm very much opposed to the introduction of bureaucracy and regulation in respect to Internet use. However, I'm also a realist and I acknowledge that there are some areas (kiddy-porn, spamming, etc) where we simply have to do something because not to act is to endorse the action of those who choose to spoil the Net for everyone.
everybody does it (Score:5, Insightful)
Given what restrictions powerful nations like the US, the UK, and Germany are trying to impose on speech in other countries, they really don't have any reason to complain when other countries try to do this as well. What they can do and should do is criticize is Mugabe, his regime, and his policies, independent of how those policies spill over into the Interne.
Re:Consider the government... (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, please.
If somebody had written "Europe is a continent for Europeans - not Africans or South Asians... And it shouldn't be - the only thing coloreds have brought to Europe is crime and welfare dependency" you'd go from 0 to self-righteous in half a second.
Peddle your hypocritical racist twaddle somewhere else.
Re:Sklyarov (Score:2, Insightful)
Good idea... got any suggestions as to where that might be?
Re:Consider the government... (Score:3, Insightful)
So you don't believe that cars, telephones, mass-produced books, vaccines, television, movies, cheap clothing (i.e. mass-produced clothing such as denim jeans), or computers are things? Don't get me wrong, I don't approve of one group attacking another and subjugating it, but you're going a bit overboard in the other direction, don't you think?
what a healthy comentary! (Score:2, Insightful)
can i ask where is the 'Insight'?
i have no love for Zimbabwe government, and really think their actions are a shame to all humanity, but this kind of comments only make things worse.
Re:Sklyarov (Score:4, Insightful)
Would you mind giving us an example of this place where they do not have sufficiently stupid laws? Does it happen to have a breathable atmosphere? I'd like to visit there some time.
The story was false (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Extradition treaty with Zimbabwe? (Score:3, Insightful)
Sounds like you haven't been keeping up with current events...
Exercises in missing the point (Score:3, Insightful)
Mugabwe is currently isolated internationally. He is within a whisker of being kicked out of the Comonwealth. He has been given a public dressing down by Tutu and Mandela. Everyone knows that the recent election was stolen by fraud. Meanwhile Mugabwe is bankrupting the country by financing military expeditions in the Congo whose principal objective is to allow the military to enrich themselves through plunder.
In these circumstances the risk of extradition to Zimbabwe to stand trial for what you write in Slashdot is none too great. What is really going on here is a trial of strength. The problem with sending people to jail for criticism is that it tends not to work in the long run, as the dictators of eastern europe found out. Mugabwe can send critics to jail but in doing so he loses the thin veneer of democratic legitimacy on which his power ultimately rests.
The Skylarof case was completely insignificant on the scale of global politics. The issue in Zimbabwe is democracy or dictatorship.
Where are you? (Score:3, Insightful)
The Guardian didn't publish this information in Zimbabwe, the people who downloaded it did. By typing "http://www.guardian.co.uk..." into their browser, or clicking on a link that did it for them, those people imported the Evil Bytes into Zimbabwe's jurisdiction. Meldrum's attorney should question the police officers with respect to the chain of custody and determine definitively who actually sent the HTTP GET request to the web server, then turn to the judge and make a motion to dismiss, as by the Prosecution witnesses' own testimony someone other than his client is responsible for those bytes being in Zimbabwe.
What about the staff of "The Onion"?? (Score:2, Insightful)
GJC
Re:Extradition treaty with Zimbabwe? (Score:1, Insightful)
In Sweden there are more commoners (these are elected for some time by the local municipal authorities) than judges at the lowest courts. Of course, having them elected by the authorities will put a political colour on the courts ruling, and this system is actually worse than the US system. This system is clearly bad (imho judges shall have a stronger vote in the rulings) and to take an example: when the Swedish prime minister was shot dead in Stockholm in the 80's a man called Christer Pettersson was charged with murder. He was ruled guilty in the lowest court, any person who could think could of course see that he would not be convicted in the higher court, this due to the fact that all the judges laid "vote" that he was not guilty. The proofs were to weak to hold. All the commoners argued that he was guilty. Because that the common people outnumbered the judges he was convicted. When the higher court took the case he was freed due to the fact that in the higher court the judges outnumber the commoners. This was actually the correct decision because the proofs did not hold any substance.
Have you any idea of how many cases I've heard of in the US in which innocents have been convicted, sometimes to death and the only real evidence have been speculations.
The point is: don't bash on a juridical system that is different than yours, no system is perfect, and just because that the US have trial by jury, the entire world shouldn't.
I am not claiming that the US system is inferior, I'm also not claiming that the international courts or Swedens system is better. They are all different systems, they all have flaws and they all have good sides.
--
Mattias
Re:Rich compared to what? (Score:3, Insightful)
This is why any group that a government doesn't like stays around to be killed instead of fleeing immediately. And governments know this, and take all possible advantage of it.