Text Of Australian Defamation Decision Online

TekPolitik writes: "The text of the Australian defamation decision is now online. As given, it only affects services that limit access to subscribers who can be identified as being in Australia (such as by credit card billing country) - Slashdot is safe for the time being. This decision will almost certainly be appealed to the Full Court of the Supreme Court of Victoria, and probably all the way to the High Court. There is unlikely to be a final outcome on this for a year."

Misguided Legal Systems

[eric434]

Well, I don't think this'll be worth any karma since NO ONE looks through the YRO listings, but anyhoo...

It's a disturbing trend we're seeing here, where "anti-hacker" hype and other external factors, not to mention corporate influences are creating court verdicts and laws that are decidedly anti-freedom. There must be something we can do... I mean the tech sector IS a major part of the global economy, and most /.'ers probably fit into that category!

Re:Misguided Legal Systems

[eric434]

LOL, I was making a subtle joke. Glad you managed to vent though. To quote H2G2: "Stress is one of the major problems facing the known universe." (yeah I know I probably got it wrong but I don't exactly have the book open in front of me)

While not as worrisome...

[Masem]

I still don't like the fact that this case exists. However, I'm glad that this was limited to where the identity and location of the subscriber or purchaser must be verified; this at least allows any publisher in such a situtation to take steps to block access to material if necessary (for example, blocking subscribed users from .fr from seeing certain auctions on ebay). It's a much saner approach to 'incoming net filtering' than what France has already done with Yahoo.

However, one thing that concerns me, similar to when the COPA (Child Online Protection Act) came to pass, was that there is technology there that can determine age/location with sufficiently decent verification for gov't work, that it might be required that *anyone* that runs a website would have to install such tools in order to make sure that content that is not suitable for specific users can be blocked. And these credit card verification services are not cheap, thus possibly imposing a new barrier to entry to web publishing. Furthermore, as per a somewhat recent /. story on the ability to determine geographical location by the numerical IP address, this would require everyone to install patented property, allowing one group to create an effective barrier on those that can't pay the price for the tool.

These types of things worry me more; the ability of either corporations or businesses to effectively prevent anyone without a good-sized wallet from participating in publishing on the Internet, as one story indicated yesterday. The Internet today is mostly where it is in terms of content due to the fact that anyone can publish their ideas without a large barrier to entry, and if that was removed.. well, see what even Cable TV is like for example where only limited groups are allowed to publish.

Re:While not as worrisome...

[daoine]

this at least allows any publisher in such a situtation to take steps to block access to material if necessary

Actually, I think this is the meat of the problem. By forcing the publisher to be responsible for content generation based on the location of the subscriber, we open up the whole can of worms. Suddenly, publishers are responsible for knowing ALL the limitations of every country that has a modem somewhere in it. I think this is the case people don't want -- IANAL in America, and I shouldn't have to be one in Australia either to prevent myself from getting sued under some law in another country.

It's placing the responsibility on the wrong people. A country is responsible for enforcing its own laws. It can not expect the rest of the world to abide by the laws it has set for it's own society.