Iceland Votes "Já" To Proposed News Haven 232
eldavojohn writes "The proposed rules shielding journalists harbored in Iceland are now official. It appears that sites like Wikileaks and Cryptome could have a friendlier home base. For those familiar with the Icelandic tongue, the voting results and legalese. Some of the details can be found at www.immi.is."
is it just me? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:is it just me? (Score:1, Interesting)
Probably the most important ingredient of their success is their small size.
I urge everyone to read works by Leopold Kohr...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_Kohr
Re:is it just me? (Score:1, Interesting)
Would these be M or FP voters? Because those guys will sometimes make up some very "interesting" statistics that show how us Swedes supposedly pay close to 100% of our incomes in taxes. (In case you're wondering, the trick is to only count income tax for some other country and then compare that to income tax + sales tax + import tax for anything the "average" Swede buys and so on).
Another common complaint from the same crowd is about the so-called "Jante law" which supposedly rears its ugly head in the form of Swedes being dismissive and unfriendly to anyone successful, not to mention apparently sabotaging anyone destined to be successful (I know this is not something unique for Sweden but those who blame the "Jante law" will often claim it is). In reality most people who whine about how the "Jante law" is keeping them down seem to be either reality TV "stars" who aren't in the spotlight anymore (and no-one's buying their autobiography *insert surprised look here*) or failed "entrepreneurs" who had a useless business model, failed and then blame "everyone else" to ensure that they can still get investors for their next crackpot idea...
EU membership will undo this (Score:5, Interesting)
That will probably be all undone as a condition to EU membership (which I think is inevitable at this point).
Re:is it just me? (Score:5, Interesting)
Off topic: A funny detail is, that Nordic countries have this unofficial (maybe even official) agreement that in acute medical cases, citizens of other Nordic countries are taken care of for free, basically with no questions asked. No need to show travel insurance or anything, applies to operations, x-rays etc.
Re:is it just me? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd really like to see a lower VAT though. 25% (except for food and books) is ridiculous and makes everything so much more expensive to buy. I order almost everything on the Internet from the UK, Germany or the north-eastern European countries.
Re:is it just me? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not trying to be snarky, I am just not sure what you're trying to state by saying reality has a bias.
A good idea for Iceland (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:EU membership will undo this (Score:2, Interesting)
What are you talking about? Check the world stats for freedom of the press [wikipedia.org]. EU countries are ALL, either less restrictive than USA or at most, some are equally restrictive.
I know things are not perfect around here when you go on a country by country basis in southern European countries and Eastern European, but most of the laws and directives of the EU commission are quite good ones for the normal citizen, you can see they are not there just to defend the rich ones.
But mostly and what shows me that you don't know what are you talking about, is that Iceland is already quite into the EU, they belong to Schengen Space and to EU free trade zone. And the talks to enter the EU are already practically finished, the only real step left for them to join us, is they own internal referendum about the subject, that should happen in 2 years.
Re:Bandwagon anyone? (Score:2, Interesting)
yeah, i wonder if fallout from people shifting to Iceland servers will result in countries shutting down their transoceanic fibre links in retaliation.
Re:is it just me? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Bandwagon anyone? (Score:3, Interesting)
NYT or WaPo could probably pull a nice one by leaking finds to wikileaks or similar, and then writing a article about some leak from a unknown source to wikileaks. Basically, as long as it cant be proven that they did the leak, they both get to blow the whistle, and wash their hands by pointing the finger at a third party.
Re:is it just me? (Score:2, Interesting)
Scandinavia is quite harsh on drugs compared to western Europe in general. OTOH they don't have US-style craziness where bizarre legal contortions turn someone caught with weed into a co-conspirator to every crime ever committed by the international drug cartels.