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Censorship Your Rights Online

Sweden and Freedom of Speech 13

Posted by michael from the the-long-arm-of-the-law dept.
Mikael Pawlo writes "The Swedish website Flashback is getting back online. The controversial web site is now hosted by the Swede Zenon Panoussis, currently living in the Netherlands." I'm pretty sure we've posted a story about this before, but I can't find it in the archives. It's a tale about how to suppress speech you don't like without going through regular channels - see below for more.

"The website has an interesting story. Flashback is a web site, a newsletter, a magazine and an virtual ISP. It's editor in chief and CEO is Jan Axelsson, a Swede well-known for his strong believes in freedom of speech. All business is conducted in the spirit of "freedom of speech - use it or loose it". Everyone is welcome to publish their opinions or host their websites with Flashback, as long as they do not break the laws of Sweden, such as threats, defamation and so forth.

"Nevertheless, a Swedish politician, Bjorn Fries, has been trying to shut Flashback down for a long period of time. Fries is a famous nazi-fighter in Sweden and has received several awards for his work. Fries argues that he's beeing threatened by one of the web sites hosted by Flashback. However, he did not try to shut the site down in court. Instead the municipal lawyer of Karlskrona (where Fries is chairman of the municipal executive board) wrote all the mayor Swedish cable and Internet providers, urging them not to sell Internet access to Flashback. This also happened.

"All the larger companies denied Flashback access and they denied smaller ISPs backbone access if they would take Axelsson as a customer. Thus Flashback was put offline. Axelsson has sued the major companies for breach of the EC competition law, but such law suits take long time in Sweden and it's a tough case to win.

"This has raised interesting questions whether major ISPs should be able to choose their customers and the customers of their ISP customers. Please note that no legal suit has predestined the shutdown of Flashback.

The current location of Flashback.

Index of articles about the incident - most of them in Swedish."
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Sweden and Freedom of Speech More

Sweden and Freedom of Speech

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  • As stated in the summary, there's no legal precident, no direct government shutdown, or anything - just that the gov't person wrote enough ISPs to basically blacklist the site. Is this censorship? Not directly... I don't know what freedom of speech they have in Swed but I'd assume that it's about as open as the US. This could be thought of in so many ways:

    Privately owned companies have a right to refuse business with you; you can't buy a car in the states if your credit rating is terrible, for example. Of course, the reasons must be anti-discrimatory -- I can't say "Only men may by things from me", lest I get equal rights protectors on me. What's weird here is that every business that serves the ISP need for this site refuses his business with no other viable alternative except for going out of the country...an interesting twist on indirect censorship...

    Which raises another question - the fact that the gov't person wrote things to these ISPs to deny the site service consistute as libel? Certainly the site appears to be doing nothing wrong against the law in Sw, but one person in a power position doesn't like what they say and takes action to prevent it? Certainly there's some significant damage here particulary if they are a small ISP and thus a for-profit business.

    Finally, one has to wonder to what extent freedom of speech is covered. Assuming a similar freedom of speech right as in the states that would be in Sw, is having unrestricted access to a medium part of that freedom, given necessary concerns on finacal and technological ability? (I don't think we can go and say that net access is a universal right, as that would mean we'd have to completely wire every house in the US with net access, and that would be expensive!!). If I have the ability and the money to use a public medium to deliever a message which is covered by freedom of speech, would an effective blockage of that medium (even though other, less effective mediums are available) a violation of freedom of speech? I figure that in the US, the answer to this would be no, given the currect thought in the US gov't, but this is a nation-by-nation decision.

  • I had been reading some briefs on injunctions and lawsuits. From those readings it seems as though civil lawsuit is considered a government action.

    Even a government agency contacting a business could be considered a government action. What if the secret service calls your boss and asks to make an appointment to inspect your computer as part of an investigation? Do you think that you'd still have a job? It's a mighty big hamer that the government yeilds; it must be handled with care.

  • Well, it's a freedom of speech question -- it's where you have to draw the line between a true threat and a possible one. It's very similar to the case of the pro-life group with the web site that resembled a hitlist of doctors that performed abortions, with 'X's through those that were killed or shot at by assailents. Is it free speech or is it a threat? It's a tough call.

    However, what SHOULD have been done, given the additional information, is the gov't person talking to Flashback *first*, asking them to remove the pages of the threat; Flashback could have looked, determined if it was such, and taken appropriate action; if they decided it wasn't, they could have easily written a letter back to this person saying so, and any further action by this person would then easily be seen as threatening legal action.

    Instead, the gov't offical bypassed Flashback completely, and took more drastic measures, suggesting that there was an alterior motive for this; maybe he didn't like MOST of the material at Flashback which does sound like an peaceful anti-government-like site. Which any politican should of course be wary about, but trying to shut down completely is very much an abuse of power.

  • Yes, it's the same Zenon Panoussis.
  • The problem is that no legal action was taken whatsoever. If the site was shut down by court you could file for an appeal or accept the judgment. Now, however, the major companies have solely shut the web site down without any legal action. Since Internet access is no constitutional right and can be limited on commercial grounds (which is what happened to Jan Axelssons Flashback) there is no protection against behaviour like this.

    I don't know if Bjorn Fries is right. He might have been threatened or not. However, I find it very disturbing that a government official can act in this way, since it circumvents the legal protection of free speech.

    What will it be next?

    Will Bjorn Fries write the ISPs and tell them to shut me out for posting these comments on Slashdot?
    Or will some religous group with a lot of money shut out their critics from the net?

    On the other hand you should have the freedom to business with whoever you like. But maybe you can solve the problem by forcing cable companies and major internet providers to do business with all customers conducting legal operations. If so - the smaller ISPs and resellers of net access would be able to have clients like Flashback, i e using the Internet back bone.

    I realise this is a very complicated issue, but it's also a very important one.

  • CoS won the case. The sentence was a permanent restrictive order, destruction of the seized diskettes and print, Panoussis ordered to pay CoS damages of 10.000 SEK, legal costs 1.274.500 SEK. The sealed documents was put in continued secrecy (they were public at first - which caused a lot of fuzz and a US government intervention in Sweden).

    One version of the story is online here. [online.no]

  • This is a very good point and it has been considered in Sweden as well. In the Swedish constitution ("regeringsformen") it's clear that all governmental action should be conducted in a way that promote the freedom of opinion.

    Bjorn Fries has in recent interviews expressed his sadness over the shutdown of Flashback (ehurm..!).

    To me it's pretty clear that a government official can't act in this fashion. He's supposed to use the democratic means available. However, what's shocking is that all the ISPs and cable owners has listened to him and agreed to shut Flashback and Jan Axelsson of the net.

    It should probably be added that Flashback is widely considered a menace on the Swedish Internet since a lot of uncomforting views have been expressed in Flashbacks net publications. This is also why the shutdown has not raised more fury in Sweden. The persons versed in the debate field didn't like Flashback in the first place so they don't mind the shutdown.

    To me - Flashback is besides the point. The principle must be that the behaviour as such must not be accepted.

  • There is a very easy, simple and obvious solution to all this: ISPs should be regarded as common carriers. That would (a) rid them of responsibility for their customers' content and rid them of the need to have legal departments dealing with the one complaint after the other, (b) put the full responsibility for Internet communications and publications where it belongs, at the user and (c) force ISPs to behave like common carriers. The latter would mean that they can't refuse your content any more than the US mail can refuse your letter or the local telco can refuse you a phone line.

    There has been an even more elegant proposal on how to solve this, basically suggesting that ISPs should be given the right to register as common carriers or abstain from it. That would allow them to opt for the common carrier's set of responsibilities and obligations or for the "traditional" set of the same. It would allow specialised ISPs, like for instance political and religious ones, to keep screening their customers while taking publisher's responsibility for the customers' content, while it would also allow those that want to operate freely without publisher's responsibility to do so. Unfortunately we are still very far from this ideal situation and the ISPs themselves are doing their best, by playing censors of their users, to get more responsibilities dumped on them.

    Zenon Panoussis

  • The CoS won the case so far. The sequel is coming up soon at a theatre near you, namely at the Stockholm court of appeals on January 18-26 (in Dolby Surround[TM] if available). Exciting developments might be in store.

    Legal stuff aside, the CoS lost in all practical purposes and intents. Their "secret scriptures" are all over the place by now, and the ghost can never be put back into the bottle. The CoS suffered a tremendous PR disaster through that lawsuit and has not sued a critic ever since. I think that the words "lost" and "won" somehow lose their meaning in this issue.

    Zenon Panoussis

  • Zenon has to show up for the appeal next week in Sweden. He hasn't completely lost yet :)

    Leto
  • [The opinions expressed herein are my own, and have no legal or scientific proof behind them, so they might be wrong, although I personally believe them correct]

    But the worst thing, in my opinion, is not that Zenon lost, or that those CoS freaks won, but that this proved, once and for all, that a crazed cult can, if influential enough in for example the US, change (at least the interpretation of) the constitutional law of a small country, i.e. Sweden in this case.

    (This means, of course, that at least Sweden is no more than a US protectorate, and that Swedish law is, after due process, inferior to US law even on swedish soil)

    Earlier any document that was posted to the government was a public document, following the so called "offentlighetsprincipen", the "public document principle", or something. This was a powerful weapon against many forms of corruption, since you could easily, by paying for the paper-copier, get copies of any official documents.
    This was (and is still, although not interpreted the same) written in the swedish constitution)

    But now these papers are no more public than secret military documents, if they are copyrighted and the owner of these rights don't want them published.

    This means that I can, if I have written them myself, prevent any governmental documents from being public. I can send mail to any governmental institution and prevent anyone from screening my interaction with the powers that be.

    This might not seem as a large change, for those of you who never had any "offentlighetsprincip", but I find it to be a change for the worse.

    //Martin This means that I can send papers to any government official
  • some bad formatting at the end there...
    sorry

  • Hmmmm....a celebrated Nazi-hunter did this....

    how sad...

    He should remember the famous quote by Audre Lourdes:

    "The tools of the master will never dismantle the house of the master."

    The Nazis were all for censorship and abuse of power to silence dissent.

    Those same tools will never overthrow Nazi ideas or ideology. Remember, the only two places that I've ever heard of where "The Producers" is banned are Germany and Israel!

    BTW "The Producers" is a funny movie by Mel Brooks that uses Hitler, Nazism, and the Holocaust as material. It's actually a commentary on the US theater industry. It's as funny as hell, especially if you're Jewish and from the NYC area!

    Also Note: For those readers in New York City, or those planning to visit it: At some point in April, "The Producers" will come to BROADWAY as a MUSICAL! Really! Mel Brooks wrote 17 new songs for it! Defy the censors, sit in a comfy chair, and watch a guy in jackboots tapdance to "Springtime for Hitler!!"

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