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Greek Blog Aggregator Arrested
Posted by
kdawson
on Sun Oct 29, 2006 05:25 PM
from the careful-what-you-link-to dept.
from the careful-what-you-link-to dept.
arcanumas writes to tell us that Greek authorities have raided the house of Antonis Tsipropoulos, administrator of the blog aggregation site Blogme.gr. His hard drive was seized and he was arrested. The impetus was a satiric website, not named in the stories, that apparently offended a Greek public figure (also unnamed). The site in question was not hosted by Tsipropoulos but was merely linked to by his RSS fed. From the first article: "The developing story coincides with the Internet Governance Forum being hosted in Athens this week, to be attended by Internet luminaries, entrepreneurs, and activists like Vint Cerf, Bob Kahn, and Joi Ito and featuring panels on Openness and Freedom of Expression."
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Monsters (Score:5, Insightful)
Seems to be a monster in the Greek government. I would love to hear some of the luminaries at the conference discuss this and embaress the Greek govenment publicly.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
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Greece is generally democratic, but it isn't really a towering symbol of European freedom. So, an article like this should hardly be surprising, when stuff almost as bad as this happens occasionally in the US/UK/Germany/etc.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh, you mean kinda like the USA?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
That's not it. It's simpler than that.
It's "southernness".
In general, "southern" countries, that is, countries which do not experience overly cold climate have in common the fact that democracy is either poorly developped or a newfangled phenomenon (think of Spain, Greece and Portugal who ditched their fascist dictatorships [often installed by the US] around 30 years ago).
In these countries, the mild c
Re:Monsters (Score:5, Interesting)
Religion, as a whole, is a very bad thing to base government off of because it is so absolutist. "This is the word of God. You can't argue with God. The gov't is God's will on Earth, so arguing with the gov't is like arguing with God, you heretic." The problem is, God isn't around to run things and the people that do, in His name, are frequently bloody autocrats.
Parent
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While there were autocratic episodes (generally by those who turned away from the Church), the rule of the Empire was generally benign and the spiritual well-being of the people was much higher than now, when now much of Greece is experiencing an existential crisis from the empty values imported from the West.
The separation of Church and State does not remove the former's role as a spiritual leader, merely its ability to be a spiritual dictator.
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Protect yourself (Score:2)
Greeks will Arrest on ANY Suspicion (Score:2)
The Greek police will arrest you on suspicion of spamming. Given the coincidence they have followed as "reasonable grounds" it would seem anyone that gets a virus or trojan that might scan your address book is in jeopardy if they visit Greece. This is just crazy.
Re: (Score:2)
There was a guy who had setup a website were he supposedly, for a given price, would find you a job as a civil servant by using his 'connections' to elected official (effectively satirizing the situation in Greece).
Anyone who who has been on 'the internets' for more than 5 minutes and has an intelligence quotient over 70, could tell it was a joke (it even had badly photoshoped images)
Guess what happened. Not only was he arrested, but the mainstream media in Greece (tv, etc) reported it as complet
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Fotiou still has to report to the police every month. Incredible. They still insist on holding a trial, despite the fact the situation is totally ridiculous.
See these links for more on the Foutiou story.
http://rixstep.com/1/0/20060505,00.shtml [rixstep.com]
http://rixstep.com/1/0/20060507,00.shtml [rixstep.com]
Visit Dmitri's blog here.
http://fotiou.net/blog2 [fotiou.net]
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The weblog (Score:2)
Also, the wikipedia entry on Dimosthenis Liakopoulos is very entertaining: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimosthenis_Liakopou
Freedom of Speech (Score:3, Insightful)
I know sometimes it's hard for us living in the US to remember that our case of (mostly) free speech is not common in other parts of the world.
Even Great Britain has no guarantee of free speech, per se.
Now, if only we could start spreading that around the world instead of spreading DemocracyTM, real democracy might ensue.
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The beginning of any "democracy" (Score:2)
Thus the reason for the first amendment.
After that, you have to be able to stand up and fght for your rights
My favourite sites are blog aggregators (Score:2)
Lance at Saskblogs has a nice little disclaimer:
Meanwhile, in the USA.... (Score:3, Insightful)
We have our own problems here in the States, (ie: 2600 getting sued for linking to DeCSS code...) but at least pretty much anything goes when it comes to politicians.
Name of the accusor (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:How? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is yet another example of litigation used as a means of threat. Unfortunately, this doesn't happen around Greece only. The guys that started all this probably don't have a chance in court, but they sure caused a whole lot of trouble to that guy. I only hope that he will countersue them for moral damage and demand a shitload of money in compensation.
Parent
Re:Missread... (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent