Libel Laws Used To Curb Web Protests 27
Rowdy Ray writes "Big businesses are
using Britain's libel laws to shut down websites set up by disgruntled customers or protest groups, a report by the Government's advisers on law reform has found."
good thing for the 1st Amendment (Score:1)
Re:good thing for the 1st Amendment (Score:1)
We do, of course, have a right to freedom of speech as granted to us by the declaraion of human rights, which applies everywhere in the western world except the USA. The point of this document is that libel laws are being used to restrict peoples human rights, and as such, they should be changed. It is quite understandable that a law that was introduced many years before the World Wide Web, and the adoption of the Human Rights Act might be a little outdated.
But, of course, the US has the first ammendment that means that events such as this [slashdot.org] and this [slashdot.org] will not happen there.
They don't have it here if you're underage. (Score:2)
Not much new here (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Not much new here (Score:2, Informative)
With your first statement, you demonstrate that you know nothing about this matter. I won't even bother reading the rest of your post after that bit of idiocy.
There is a substantial difference between American and British libel laws. If you are a public figure (and most big corps would be considered such under the law), under American law, and you sue for libel or slander, you must demonstrate that:
OTOH, the British laws require that the publisher or speaker demonstrate that they are not damaging or untrue. In essence British libel law considers the accused guilty until proven innocent.
Re:Not much new here (Score:2)
But still (Score:2)
Even in states with anti-SLAPP [casp.net] statutes there is still a cost in defending it. The anti-SLAPP statutes provide costs of defense as damages against the SLAPPer, but that does not deter large SLAPPers [barbieslapp.com] from abusing the courts.
Re:But still (Score:1)
The cops will get there pretty much after the fight is over.
Which is to say if you are hit with a strong enough SLAPP type lawsuit, and you can't defend against it, you're toast, they've won, and an anti-SLAPP action would pretty much is useless by then.
Devils advocate (Score:1)
Just because I don't like, say, Viacom, doesn't mean I can just go out and print a paper entitled "The Daily punkco", with a headline screaming "Viacom is built and funded by child enslavement practices, and key board members also bet on the cruel practice Mexican cat juggling!"
That would be defamatory, and whether I said it aloud, or printed physically or electronically is irrelevant. The company/individual does have the right to ask a court to shut my pie hole. While these laws are often abused, they are there for a very specific reason.
Re:Devils advocate (Score:2)
Mexican cat juggling (Score:2)
If those cats want to juggle, that should be their choice!
Actually that phrase just made me laugh. I would have to rank it right up there with 'mumbling chowderhead', used by someone on
'Shut [your] pie hole' is a classic, too, and is very handy for use on co-workers. &:-)
Re:Devils advocate (Score:1)
IMHO, there should be no laws against libel. If the statement is demonstrably false, no one will believe it, and if not, it isn't libel. Libel laws do nothing but allow corporations to censor their critics at (in effect) gunpoint.
Re:Devils advocate (Score:1)
In the U.S., truth is a defense (Score:2)
Case dismissed.
Slapp (Score:2)
Cyberlegalterrorism? (Score:1)
Australian libel laws are worse, as are FoI laws (Score:1)
- they seem to be -precluding- the existence of
a Better Business Bureau (or the like)
- even the Dep't of Consumer & Bus. Affairs
won't let you know if the company you're
having trouble with has been complained of
(with them) in past, let alone the outcome
of the complaint
FoI laws are just as bad, as this excerpt
from the transcript of a recent Radio National
'Media Report' program suggests:
--- start of excerpt:
Mick O'Regan: Now to another aspect of freedom of information. A couple of weeks ago on the program, we discussed the current state of press freedom in Australia. One of my guests, the investigative journalist, Ross Coulthart from The Sunday Program on Channel Nine, sounded a warning about the state of freedom of information, known as FOI in this country.
Ross Coulthart: We have Freedom of Information Act which is meant to facilitate the media and indeed the general public getting access to information but unfortunately the Act has become a Freedom From Information Act. The idea is you pay $30, you ask for specific documents from government institutions and the idea is, they'll provide it to you. But unfortunately in this day and age it's become a way for the executive arm of government to stop people from getting information. It's got much worse, we're in crisis. I've never seen it quite as bad as it is at the moment, and indeed it's not necessarily a legal problem, it's an attitudinal problem inside government, inside bureaucracies, and until that changes, until we get rid of the spin doctors, the spin meisters inside government, nothing's going to change.
Mick O'Regan: A fairly bleak view of Freedom of Information, Ross Coulthart, speaking on The Media Report.
But not every country is in crisis over Freedom of Information. In fact in Sweden, it's an everyday resource.
Johan Lidberg from Murdoch University in Western Australia, studied the use of FOI legislation in both Sweden and Western Australia.
Johan Lidberg: The main difference that I find is that the Swedish journalists close to every day, and in some instances several times per day use Freedom of Information laws to access their information in Sweden. Whereas the Western Australian colleagues use it a few times per year. But also the survey study that I did showed that in the responses to the survey, 100% of the Swedish journos use FOI, whereas 44% of the Western Australian ones use FOI, every now and then.
Mick O'Regan: So are we talking only about political journalists, or are we talking about journalists more broadly?
Johan Lidberg: Well that's really an interesting thing, because my experience and my thought was that it was mainly political journalists in Sweden that use FOI, and that is still the bulk. But it also spills over into, for instance, sports reporting. I had one example where a sports reporter used Freedom of Information laws to access information regarding a soccer club's dealing with the Tax Department. They had drafted foreign players into their team and they hadn't fulfilled their accounting and tax obligations, so it spills over into other areas. It also spills over into business reporting for instance, so it's not only political journalism.
Mick O'Regan: Now what practical differences does that continued use of Freedom of Information mean to the content of newspapers and current affairs programs in Sweden?
Johan Lidberg: Well the last study I did was a content analysis of the two newspapers in the study. And it showed that the main sourcing in the Swedish paper was that they paraphrased documents, they referred to documents that they had accessed, whereas the main source in the Western Australian newspaper was that they paraphrased oral sources. Those are the two major differences when it comes to content. Those were quantifiable differences. There are also qualitative differences like for instance if you look at how the quality of information, and this is a bit harder, it's easier quantifying stuff than saying that this is of high quality, but one implication of the study was that the Swedish reporters start their research by using Freedom of Information, that's their starting point. The Western Australian colleagues, they will resort, as they said in interviews with me, they will use FOI usually as a last resort when they used all other journalistic means, and that's a very important difference when it comes to judging the quality of information in the article.
Mick O'Regan: Is there a problem in Australia that the law is OK but the application is faulty?
Johan Lidberg: If you look at the two laws side by side, the Australian FOI laws, because we have quite a few since we have a Federal system, and the Swedish ones, in Sweden you only need an oral request, you don't even need to put it in writing. In some instances you do, but normally you just pick up the phone, call the public servant and say, Listen, I would like this document, can you please fax it to me? And in 90% of the cases, that's the way it goes. So in Sweden the public servants, and to some extent even the politicians, act as facilitators rather than gatekeepers. In Australia you have the opposite situation. Now we have to bear in mind at all times that the first FOI law was passed in 1982 in Australia. So it hasn't been all that long. If you look at how long it takes for traditions and especially political traditions to take root, it hasn't been that long. It's more a matter of how its interpreted and in some instances how journalists view it. If journalists in some cases were a bit more persistent, that might provoke change as well.
Mick O'Regan: So there needs to be an attitudinal shift on the part of journalists to see the need to constantly try to get documents under Freedom of Information, almost like to make the system work by constantly putting it through its paces.
Johan Lidberg: That's exactly it. There are even to this date in Sweden, you know every year there are cases with government agencies that have to be what they say 'broken in' again, or broken in because they haven't been exposed to the law before, and you have the first journalist calling or rocking up, saying Listen, I would like to have these documents, and then they say No, you can't have it. And then the journalist will say, Well are you aware of the FOI laws? And it would go from there, and it might go out on appeal and then the agency's broken in. The same thing I would like to see happen in Australia. I would like to see for instance, the Australian Journalists Association being a bit more proactive. I would like to see some of the - there was one news room in my study that don't use FOI at all, saying that Well, we have our broadcast deadlines and we can't use it because it's just too cumbersome. I would like to, for instance possibly work with them in an action research project and say Give me your news conference list, I'll sit down, look at the stories and put in a few requests and see what we can get at. But it needs to be more long-term, you can't just change this in ten years or 15 years, it has to be even more long term than that.
Mick O'Regan: What about more practical barriers? For example, the cost of making an FOI application, does it cost money to seek a document in Sweden?
Johan Lidberg:No, it's free. And that's of course symbolically very, very important. You would assume that if the political will was there and if the politicians were serious about increasing the flow of information, then they would abolish the cost. So that is the problem. The biggest problem in Australia is probably the time frame, where the agency has 45 days to respond, compared to in Sweden where it's a lot less than that. Usually it should be in a matter of hours, and that's highly important. Also the fact that you've got quite a few blanket exemptions, agencies that are exempt from the law totally. Now symbolically that's important too; there are no blanket exemptions in Sweden, and that shows the basic will of making the system work.
Mick O'Regan: Now in your study you talk about the development of everyday investigative reporting. That I presume is the impact that the easy access and frequent use of FOI has meant for day to day reporting in Sweden.
Johan Lidberg: Yes. I had to come up with some sort of term of describing one of the main qualitative differences, and that is one of the main ones. If you read the regional papers in Sweden, and I did choose regional papers to get news rooms that would be as adequate as possible when it came to giving a broad view of how it works, if you read the regional newspapers, and if you look at the information in the articles, and if you compare that to the Australian sample, you will see that the calibre of information in most bread- and-butter articles in the Swedish paper, are of a weight that you hope to find when it came to thorough investigative journalism in Australia. So what I'm saying is that thanks to the extensive FOI laws in Sweden, there is investigative journalism going on every day as compared to Australia where you sit down and you really, if you're going to use FOI for investigative journalism, you're going to have to put aside some time for it.
However, the study also shows that there are journalists that make it work for them. There's one Australian journalist interviewed that said Well I put in a number of requests in June every year, because I know that in November when we have news downtime, I'll get the information. That's one way of doing it. So if you get your head around it, you can use it.
Mick O'Regan: It's just a question of getting your head around it. Johan Lidberg from Murdoch University in Western Australia. And if you're interested in reading Johan's M.A. thesis on Freedom of Information, you can email him
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