EU Parliament Pressured By France, Removes Clause That Bans Kicking People Off The Internet

from the ah,-regulatory-capture-at-work dept

With France passing its new law to kick accused file sharers off the internet based on accusations rather than due process, you may wonder how that could possibly square with the EU Parliament's position from earlier this year that no one should be kicked off the internet without due process, and should only be allowed in "exceptional circumstances." Well, it looks like the lobbyists and the French gov't put enough pressure on the EU Parliament that it's now ditched that clause, even though 88% of Parliament agreed to it the first time around. Forget gov't for the people, the EU Parliament has shown that it's now the gov't for an entertainment industry that doesn't want to innovate. Sad. In the meantime, we're back to asking the basic question that no one in the industry ever answers: how will kicking fans of your content offline make them want to buy anything? It may get some to stop file sharing, but it won't make them buy. It seems the industry has become so confused that it actually thinks stopping file sharing is more important than making money.

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Canadian Human Rights Tribunal Declares Internet Hate Speech Law Unconstitutional

from the common-sense-is-better-late-than-never dept

The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal has refused to enforce a controversial internet hate speech law, claiming that it's unconstitutional. The tribunal adjudicator, Athanasios Hadjis, expressed worry back in March about the "chilling effects" that Section 13 of the Canada Human Rights Act would have on the internet. In his ruling Wednesday, he decided that the restriction imposed by Section 13 "is not a reasonable limit" within the meaning of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and thus, unconstitutional. Since the tribunal isn't a real court, it can't actually strike down the law, so Hadjis just refused to impose any penalty.

Section 13 prohibits the repeated communication of "any matter that is likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt" via telephone or -- since 2001 anti-terrorism measures -- the internet. The section is quite controversial; neither truth nor intent are a defense, and it's not part of the criminal code, so it tends to become a vehicle for cases that wouldn't stand a chance in a real court. Last fall, an independent review commissioned by the Canadian Human Rights Commission itself called for Section 13 to be repealed (an epic whitewash fail), and some politicians have begun to ask for the same. For serious issues, there are other hate speech provisions in the criminal code with real defenses, handled in real courts. Section 13 makes it too easy for someone to be "dragged through the process," as Hadjis puts it.

Not only is the section controversial, but its application to the web has been clumsy at best. Hadjis said, when applied to speech online, "suddenly, the chilling effect catches not only individuals who set up telephone messages... but just about everyone who posts anything on the internet." Hadjis notes that telephone hate messages tend to be overt, while opinions on the internet include many borderline cases. Part of the problem is that there are no safe harbors in Canadian law (or "safe harbours," as we Canadians would call them). Hadjis was concerned that website owners could be charged under Section 13 for user comments on message boards and blog posts. While this particular website owner doesn't seem like all that nice of a guy (to be charitable...), twisting the law to make a site owner responsible for user posts would have set a terrible precedent. Hadjis, thankfully, had the common sense to avoid that error. Hopefully Section 13 is repealed soon, and other tribunal adjudicators take note of Hadjis' ruling in the meantime.

Blaise Alleyne is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Blaise Alleyne and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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UK DNA Database Found To Violate Human Rights

from the storing-non-convict-DNA dept

A European court has slapped down the UK for violating human rights with its fingerprint and DNA database, in that it retained the data on people not convicted of crimes. Until now, the UK police recorded fingerprints and DNA info on everyone arrested, but two guys who weren't convicted felt that their info should be deleted from the database, and the court has now agreed. The UK's defense was that "this info is important in fighting crime." Of course, so would be forcing everyone to wear a GPS device and record everything they do on cameras only the police can watch -- but we don't allow that because it's a violation of privacy. Either way, the UK now needs to start destroying info in its database and purge its data on other people who weren't convicted.

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Internet Companies Pay Lip Service To Human Rights

from the actions-speak-louder-than-words dept

After all the controversy, and threats of Congressional action, over actions by companies like Yahoo and Google to appease foreign governments against what many consider basic human rights issues, various internet companies have agreed on a set of "guidelines" for how they deal with human rights issues. While it's nice that they're actually thinking about these issues, the guidelines on the whole are pretty weak and don't bind the companies to do anything. Basically, it just says that the companies will consider the human rights issues in their decision making. If anything, this seems like an attempt to just keep the government from legislating on the issues, and it may not be very successful on that front. The real test will be in seeing how these companies actually act, rather than what sorts of guidelines they've signed.

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