Is freedom of speech dying online?
p2pnet.net news:- “In only a few months the Net has stopped being a place of freedom where anybody, anywhere regardless of race or creed, colour, sexual persuasion, physical ability or disability, or anything else, had a home,” I posted on Saturday, going on, “It didn’t matter who you were or what you thought, you could express your feelings and sentiments without fear. But that’s changing with horrifying speed.”
In 2007, anybody with more dollars than sense now feels free to sue web sites for the slightest slight. That’s bad enough, but things have now reached ridiculous extremes.
If the Net is about anything, it’s about freedom of speech and hyper-linking – directly connecting stories, data and information – is absolutely integral to it. Now, however, it’s being claimed that merely linking to something someone somewhere doesn’t like is sufficient grounds for a civil complaint.
Canada is preeminent as the defamation lawsuit marketplace. It’s the place to go for forum shopping, but that doesn’t mean to say it’s not happening elsewhere as well.
Attempts to stifle, if not completely gag, people and sites whose views run contrary to those of the (usually) corporate mainstream are becoming commonplace.
“Some might accuse me of exaggeration when I say that Canada’s libel laws are currently the most outdated and repressive in the English speaking world,” said well known Canadian media lawyer Dan Burnett last year.
“I say it is no exaggeration.”
Testing the anonymity of the Internet
The quote in the intro refers to a story which broke in the UK when university lecturer Andrew Dubber linked to a story highlighting Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG victim Suzy Del Cid’s claims of trespass, computer fraud and abuse, deceptive and unfair trade practices, civil extortion, and civil conspiracy against the Big 4’s RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America).
Over in the US of A, “the AudoAdmit site, widely used by law students for information on schools and firms, is also known as a venue for racist and sexist remarks and career-damaging rumors,” says Reuters. “Now it’s at the heart of a defamation lawsuit that legal experts say could test the anonymity of the Internet.”
Net anonymity is already being tested, but that’s nothing new. In fact, it’s being going on for a couple of years, at the least. What is new is the fact the issue is at last receiving more than cursory attention from the mainstream media.
In the American case, “After facing lewd comments and threats by posters, two women at Yale Law School filed a suit on June 8 in U.S. District Court in New Haven, Conn., that includes subpoenas for 28 anonymous users of the site, which has generated more than 7 million posts since 2004,” says Reuters.
In Canada, “Many bloggers dream of getting mainstream recognition for their work, but unfortunately for some, the attention they’re getting comes in the form of a lawsuit instead of media-star status,” says the Globe & Mail, continuing:
Earlier this week, Steelback Brewery president Frank D’Angelo filed a $2-million libel suit against Ottawa-based blogger Neate Sager for making what he says are disparaging comments about him.
In another recent case, Montreal art-gallery owner Chris (Zeke) Hand has found himself on the receiving end of a lawsuit as a result of something he wrote on the blog he maintains for Zeke’s Gallery.
Warren Kinsella, a prominent blogger and newspaper columnist, sued another blogger for libel last year, but settled the case after the blogger apologized for his remarks and paid Kinsella’s legal costs.
Zeke, also known as Chris Hand, is being sued for libel for comments he posted on his blog in Montreal. “Once you start dragging things into court, I do tend to dig my heels in,” he says.
And p2pnet, a British Columbia-based news site that writes about file-sharing, is still fighting a libel lawsuit launched by Kazaa tycoon Nikki Hemming.
The most valuable of all human rights
A case currently winding its way through the Candian civil courts was started by Wayne Crookes, the owner of West Coast Title Search, a business in New Westminster, Vancouver, Canada, and an ex-Federal Green Party organizer.
He’s suing everybody and his brother for linking to sites carrying stories which, he says, defame him. Among those named are Google, Yahoo, MySpace, PBWiki and a number of others, as well as more than a dozen online activists.
p2pnet is also on the list of victims, lined up in the same claim as Wikimedia which, I’m grateful to say, has folded me in with its own case, with Burnett, who’s also representing p2pnet in the Kazaa case, acting for us both, as well as for other defendants in the Crookes lawsuits.
“If lawsuits are the price of admission to the mainstream media business, some bloggers might start wishing for a little less recognition,” adds the Globe & Mail.
Actually, IMHO, freedom of expression is the most valuable of all human rights and what bloggers (and anyone else who wants to be able to speak freely on or offline) wish for isn’t less recognition, it’s more.
They’re demanding legal protection from self-serving individuals and companies who use current laws, some of them dating back to the 1600s, to slapp down Net stories, comment posts, links, blogs and vlogs they don’t like.
“If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter,” said George Washington in the 18th century.
Said Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reporter Bill Schackner in 2005, “… there has been exponential growth in the number of blogs, where people post everything from vacation photos to amateurish poetry to scathing political commentary, often with frequent updates and room for others to post responses.”
He added, “Maybe it’s no surprise, given how empowering it can be to have one’s own thoughts transported instantly across the globe. But once there, they become fodder for anyone who is inclined to turn an author’s words against him.”
Jon Newton – p2pnet
If your Net access is blocked by government restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.
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Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. Do bug your local politicians. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance. Don’t just complain. Do something!
June 20th, 2007 at 9:27 am
I’m posting this again because I wasn’t registered before and my posting name came up as: “Anonymous Coward”. Can’t have that.
Well done. Well written. Well said. I agree that we are in some very interesting times now and the changes we are engulfed are most certainly scaring the crap out of the big boys who are clinging desperately to their power and control. We will win. It won’t happen overnight but we’ll get there. Keep up the good work.
June 20th, 2007 at 8:35 pm
might not have got thru.
check http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/art/2007/06/saatchi_liked_my_art_so_much.html
and see how although its supposed to be my blog, im censored from commenting on it, because i complained that i didnt write the title. the guardian online contacted me and asked me to write a blog. i sent them a blog, and they asked if they could rewrite it. i agreed to a rewrite, and the journalist and i went through it on the fone together, which was probably a mistake, in hindsight. then when i saw it was online, they had made a title up which i had never said or written or agreed to. it sounded like it was my words.
i emailed them and asked them to change it, but they said that because there were no quotes on it that it was a title and not a misquote. i know papers do that stuff all the time, but because it was me, it felt different.
My artwork deals with internet communication and future horrors, and this was all starting to feel abit close to what im interested in (and scared by)
i started leaving comments (on ‘my own blog’) saying how i hadnt written it and that the title was completely made up by the people at the guardian.
the comments i left were promptly deleted or edited and no mention was left on the blog by the moderator to show that they had been edited in that way.
I started accusing them of censorship, and these comments were deleted also, but luckily not before other people had seen them, so it started a debate on the guardian’s free speach policy stuff. i got a few kind phone calls from a moderator who tried to sort it out ( the mods were great over the fone) they actually tried to change the title, and it was changed, so everything was ok.
then i was on my way home and i got a call from another guy at the guardian. he was the one who had rewritten the article with me over the phone. (he had also been friendly untill this point)
he said he was puzzled by what had been happening on the web blog, and i said everything had been sorted out and appologised for the trouble. he continued to tell me that i shouldnt go accusing a national newspaper of censorship and that i could get sued. he also threatened to take the blog offline. i told him that it might be easier for him if he did, but i didnt care either way.
check the blog for more details. im really sick of getting censored.
the reason i post here is because my great friend fil has been following this site for a great many years and said that truth could be found without censorship or moderation except for spelling mistakes. and this community would listen. thankyou.
June 22nd, 2007 at 5:56 am
Well as my dad has said on many occasions”You can sue anyone, anywhere at anytime here in America….but the KEY is being able to WIN!”
It is much harder to win a lawsuit than it is to start one.
I don’t think judges are entirely stupid (most anyway)… they can realize when someone is suing just because they don’t like what is written about them.
So again, just because these people sue…does NOT guarantee them a victory in court….especially when some of the reasons are so frivolus that they can be thrown out of court at anytime.
October 25th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
Those who control the media control what is published. This is true to the same extent in cyberspace. I have experienced it myself on http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk for over two years.
I had been stalked on there by someone who i later discovered and proved with evidence, was also impostoring me elsewhere on the internet. The impostor attacked other members of the saatchi artists website, using my name and giving details about me in his attempt to convince others he was really me. This developed into a full scale war of a group of people attacking, harassing and abusing me, with malicious and libelous publications mentioning me by my full names, which, inevitably found their way into google searches of my name. Over the period of two years of this abuse, dozens of times a day on a daily basis, my google rating fell from over 120 thousand results, to a mere handful today. I first reported the matter to the Police in july 2007, and as i had evidence as to who my main stalker was, he received a formal written Police warning. He broke the warning the next day and continued on his rampage to further destroy my life and career, also of my partners, with a stronger campaign against me, this time brazen enough to use his real name. He elicited the assistance of several others on the website. I can now see, in hindsight, that he had impostored me and attacked the people he was befriending, posing as me, and then befriending them as himself and sending them private messages, telling them lies about me to win them over to his cause. This caused several outright wars on Charles Saatchis website, with death threats galore, revelaing our names, addresses and telephone numbers, that caused Saatchi to close their forums and chatroom on two ocassions. Last week they closed it again.
In april of this year, after making untrue and unlawful criminal allegations, naming both myself and my partner, published in Saatchi, by the main stalker and his main accomplice, this lead to the two of them being arrested a total of three times, but it did not stop the stalking and harassment and libel. Which continued by other registered members of the website.
Last year, Saatchi would censor and remove many of my postings, and then banned me entirely from the website for having the audacity to speak my mind, as is my right of reply. But Charles Saatchi i have read on the internet, is a member of a powerful group of people, known as the St. John’s Wood Mafia, and to a great extent they have control over the media.
Angered by being denied my freedom of expression, I decided to create a visual factual novel of what had transpired on his website over the previous year. I created pop art comedy noir cartoons feauturing a design i had created, my artistic impression of the mushroom – the Phallus impudicus ! I had screenshots of chat sessions, forum thread and magazine blogs that had libelled and attacked and threatened me, and knew the identities of many of those people. I found images of these people freely available in the public domain of the internet, and used these as heads on the mushrooms, with balloons coming out of their mouths, saying the things they said to me in chat, and published online. I also composed my own music and created a youtube animated video, with a link to a flickr account that had large individual images which i had created for the animation.
Once in awhile I would use an internet cafe to observe what whas going on, and in chat one day, someone told me, why are you here, you are banned. Neeraj, Saatchi admin, is going to see that you go to jail, and he has arranged for your flickr account with those images to be terminated. Two days later, flickr did indeed terminate my account. I immediately signed up for another flickr account, and several days later they also terminated that account.
On the 11th October, 2008, a anonymous author published a front page magazine blog, approved by saatchi, as they now have filters and leave a message that they will not post rubbish when you go to post a blog. The image was described in the blog as a depiction of myself and my partner. Since its publication another war has ensued that has again forced Saatchi to close down its forums, also with the message that members meanwhile should post in the magazine blog section. Therefore, this one magazine blog has since the 11th october, drawn almost 600 comments, that attack me still further. There are plenty of comments in support of me, and the blog now contains a good outline of what has been going on for over two years on that website. On the day of the publication of that image, I made a formal complaint, on the grounds of indecency and obscenity, to Belgravia Police Station. The result is that the image, and the harassing blog is still live online. You can see it on the following link, and I would appreciate your comments on my rights being taken away from me.
http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/blogon/drupal/node/32943
The blog is being deflected by my attackers, and lots of rubbish is being posted, but if you search through it, you will find some gems of information. Emails to saatchi from my solicitor, and saatchi lying about an agreement they made with him. Email from Saatchi PR to a USA journalist Craig S. Bland, denying any knowledge of what had been happening on their website, and other links to proof of what has been going.
Saatchi is still allowing me to be a scapegoat, even after proving to them all that i had my computer admittedly hacked by my stalker and proved he was my impostor. They refuse to accept the truth and have flawed memories of events, and continue to publicly name and falsely shame and attack me. It seems that i am rapidly becoming something i do not wish to be, an internet legend. I wish I could stop this, but have failed to find a way to do so.
You can see the life and work of myself and my partner, here :-
http://www.artreview.com/profile/VioletWaterDragonProductions
Thank you for your time, and i would appreciate any helpful advice.