The Wall Street Journal has reported that an Indian company is suing a blogger for defamation. A Wired blog is predicting a win for that company.

In case you aren’t familiar with the case. Here’s a quick run-down:

• “Toxic Writer”, an anonymous blogger, made some comments about the company
• The company, Gremach Infrastructure Equipments & Projects Ltd., is based in Mumbai, India
• The allegation is that the blogger is engaging in “hate speech”
• The blog’s been removed, but the Blogger.com subsidiary, based in India, is claiming no responsibility

According to some legal experts, countries that were once a British colony see these types of lawsuits often. This is perhaps the most high profile of the cases of this sort. What makes it so special, however, is one simple fact of the law: Any company doing business in any country in the world is subject to the local laws, regardless of its country of origin.

Google is a U.S. company. If the same suit happened in the U.S. then Google would likely win. But India has no first amendment and companies fighting this type of suit in those countries typically lose. That means Google will have to change its operating policies for bloggers in that country. But this is where it gets sticky.

The blogger is being threatened with loss of anonymity. Doesn’t he have a right to privacy? The real issue here is the crossroad between a blogger’s right to blog anonymously and the right of the company to have nothing defamatory said about it. If the blogger wins then all is well (except for the company). If the company wins, the blogger not only loses anonymity in India, but in every country in the world.

What if a U.S. citizen, blogging anonymously, makes an off-hand comment about an international company headquartered in India, or another country with no first amendment law? Which court has jurisdiction? Furthermore, which nation’s laws will be applied to the situation?

Will the U.S. blogger be subject to Indian laws? Will Google? Since search engine results can theoretically be viewed in any country, based on personal preferences and geographic concerns as applied by Google’s algorithms, you can see how these situations could lead to some sticky case law. Either every search engine headquartered in every country will have to adopt a different policy to reflect the local laws of each nation in which it operates or an international body governing Internet search and publishing will need to be created to maintain a consistent legal policy that governs the entire world’s policy regarding defamation, copyright, and related issues.

The only question left to answer is, Which path will be taken?

This story was first published at Blogger News Network.

Close to half of Americans believe the Internet should be regulated. About the same number say they use the Internet every day or almost every day. These are interesting stats.

Presumably, the survey that produced these stats came about due to the harassment case involving a woman who pretended to a boy interested in a high school girl who killed herself when the fictitious “boy” later lost interest. This is a tragic story indeed. But harassment laws are already on the book. Of course they should apply to the Internet just as they apply to the local drug store, your church group, or the YMCA.

What these Americans are saying when they claim that they want a regulated Internet is that they would like the FCC or a similar agency to monitor Internet communications to keep out anything that they might find offensive. But there are huge, HUGE problems with that. No. 1, much of what is produced on the Internet comes from other countries. No federal agency has the authority to police what is produced in other countries. No. 2, if such an agency did exist then it is inevitable that it would eventually gain the authority to block sites not produced in the U.S. on the grounds of some type of non-objective criteria judging what is and is not offensive. Giving any government agency the authority to block any website online is not the answer and is not desirable. It would curtail the freedom that has made the Internet a fast-growing success in American culture.

We don’t need Internet regulation. It regulates itself. The search engines do an adequate job of filtering out spam and do a reasonably good job of ensuring that communications online are segmented into information categories recognized by keyword search queries. It’s not a perfect system, but is a system that has developed naturally over the course of the Internet’s lifeline. Americans need to first understand the nature of the medium before they start asking for bureaucrats who likely will understand it even less to monitor and regulate the best tool since Gutenberg’s press.

Democracies struggle to come into their own in the middle east as we know all too well. It is good to see that citizens and journalists are being allowed to protest in Pakistan over freedom of the press.

Journalists condemn curbs on media

They gathered in front of the Rawalpindi-Islamabad Press Club on the call of the Rawalpindi-Islamabad Union of Journalists (RIUJ). The journalists shouted anti-government slogans and criticised media gags. Students and members of civil society also joined the protest to express solidarity with journalists.

The protestors held placards inscribed with slogans ‘free press’, ‘stop violation against journalists’, ‘freedom of expression is people’s right’. They said the government could not prevent them from performing their professional duties and that they were committed to factual reporting, through which the government was held accountable to the public. The journalists said the government’s claims of freedom of press were false since it had targeted journalists because they were exposing its misdeeds and anti-public policies. Free media, they said, was an important pillar of the state.

Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ) General Secretary Mazhar Abbass said journalists were a peaceful community and they were only performing their duties.

Civil disobedience is the path to freedom and democracy. It has been for the US and it is now in countries like Pakistan. The news media and citizens of countries in the middle east are the ones that have to stand up and fight for their freedoms and for democracy if they want it.

George Bush believes he can force these countries to become democratic. It is an uninformed and uneducated opinion some others in the republican party share. This country got it’s freedom and became a democracy because citizens stood up to tyranny. Because they wanted freedom and democracy.

They risked their lives for it. They knew that english soldiers would kill dissenters for speaking out against the crown, but they did it anyway. Many lost their lives doing so. Many soldiers have died defending our freedom since then.

In Iraq, the people did not stand up against saddam hussein, against tyranny. A few obviously did and died but their was no mass rebellion to say the least. So bush took it upon himself to stand up for them even without being asked to do so. He told us they would welcome us with open arms. They did, but they also had bombs strapped to their waists.

You cannot tell people they should be free. You cannot force people to be free or to stand up for their rights. They have to want it so bad they are willing to risk their lives for it just as our forefathers did.

If the people of a country cannot stand up and fight for their own freedoms and to have a democracy, then they will never be able to keep it, defend it, or maintain it. You cannot give people freedom. They have to earn it.

I was reading a story today on Mashable.com that really shows how the mainstream media is scared of the new media. Their hypocracy knows no bounds.

Citizen Journalism: Dangerous and Irresponsible

Just a commnet on that headline first. That is the sentiment of the mainstream media toward bloggers of the new media. Picture Germany under Hitler for a moment. Doesn’t that look like a headline you would find in a german newspaper of that era?

story by Mark ‘Rizzn’ Hopkins

I first noticed the sentiment growing last week, when Aunt B Helen Thomas gave an interview to the Huffington Post:

Q: Do you think technology is changing [journalism]? That a good reporter will always find a venue because there are so many media outlets now?

Thomas: No, but I do think it is kind of sad when everybody who owns a laptop thinks they’re a journalist and doesn’t understand the ethics. We do have to have some sense of what’s right and wrong in this job. Of how far we can go. We don’t make accusations without absolute proof. We’re not prosecutors. We don’t assume.

Q: So if there’s this amateur league of journalists out there, trying to do what you do…

Thomas: It’s dangerous.

Dangerous? Freedom of Speech is dangerous? People who read blogs know that much of the time the blogger is writing their own opinion about the news such as I am doing here.

However, most news blogers check and attribute the sources of their information so people have the chance to research and form their own opinions. This is the new media and it is here to stay and I think mainstream media just doesn’t know what to do about it.

But look at fox news, or Faux news as many like to call it. The slant put on the topics discussed on fox news is apparent to all but the few who still believe it is fair and balances.

Fox news is nothing more than a right wing podcast you can pick up on your television. They have the hannity and Coombs blog, the bill o’reilly blog, etc. etc. Most news bloggers are at least as qualified as hannity or o’reilly to spout their opinions.

The most compelling points the Old Media seems to be making these days is that no one in the blogging community has the scruples to adhere to the “unwritten ethical principals” of the mainstream media.

I’ll give you a minute to compose yourself while you laugh out loud.

Then you can read the rest of the story here

Things That Just Piss Me Off

The RIAA doesn’t get the whole Internet thing yet. The Movie Industry doesn’t get the whole Internet Thing yet. So I guess the CEO of AP, Associated Press shouldn’t feel bad that he doesn’t understand it either.

AP CEO Declares War On Internet
Submitted by David A. Utter to WebProNews on Fri, 12/07/2007 - 06:26

“If you want our content, we expect to be paid for it … this nonsense that you can just take the first paragraph or use the picture small doesn’t really fly with us. People die trying to take those pictures,” Curley said in the report.

Soldiers die in wars and the AP makes money on the pictures they take and the money they make from that as well. When they cover a murder, they sell that news to organizations and don’t compensate the family of the person that died.

Fair use remains the topic that never seems to come up in the discussion of using content others have created. Doctrines of fair use allow for “any copying of copyrighted material done for a limited and ‘transformative’ purpose such as to comment upon, criticize or parody a copyrighted work,” according to Stanford University’s Copyright & Fair Use Center.

Just as I am doing in this blog post. It’s legal and it’s fair use.

This leaves the issue open for people like Curley and a deep-pocketed organization to force a definition of fair use by litigating against anyone who tries to reuse their content.

Exactly. The CEO of AP says “people die to take those pictures”. That is not what this is about. It’s about a greedy corporation trying to litigate against smaller entities to force them from doing what is legal.

It’s no different than when the RIAA tries to say they are suing people to protect the artists. It’s to help big record companies continue to profit on the backs of the artists so they can continue to be the only ones allowed to screw the artists over.

Maybe the AP should just merge with the RIAA.

The Rest of The Story here

DUBLIN, Califiornia (AP) — Video blogger Joshua Wolf, who spent a record-setting stint behind bars for refusing to turn over his footage of a chaotic 2005 street protest, walked out of prison after cutting a deal with prosecutors.

His prison time surpassed the previous record set by Vanessa Leggett, a Houston-based freelancer who served 168 days in 2001 and 2002 for declining to reveal unpublished material about a murder case.

Free speech has been under attack in recent years. Governments at all levels have been n the offensive in changing laws that protect journalists, writers, and other artists who have a voice and want to keep it. Thanks to people like Wolf we still have a little bit of freedom left. Unfortunately, it keeps dwindling. Now the question is how long will it be before we lose it entirely?

And don’t say it can’t happen in America. They didn’t think it would happen in Germany either. Remember, Hitler was elected by a majority vote.

News and Media Blog

CHICAGO — Two suburban Chicago students filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court claiming their high school violated one of the students’ civil rights by not letting her wear an anti-gay T-shirt last year.

Heidi Zamecnik, 17, of Naperville, and Alexander Nuxoll, 14, of Bolingbrook — students at Neuqua Valley High School in Naperville — filed the lawsuit seeking court permission to openly express their opinions on homosexuality during the National Day of Silence, scheduled for April 18.

On the Day of Silence, students can refrain from speaking as an effort to protest discrimination against homosexuals.

In response to a Day of Silence event at the school in April 2006, Zamecnik wore a shirt that read “MY DAY OF SILENCE, STRAIGHT ALLIANCE” on the front and “BE HAPPY, NOT GAY” on the back, according to the suit filed Wednesday.

This is how far our national public school system has gone. No longer is free speech an absolute. Rather, if you disagree with the establishment opinion on certain subjects of sacred cow status then you are denied your rights. These students should sue and I hope they win. Every student should have a right to speak his or her mind, or not, as the occasion may permit. Instead of squelching free speech for any student, public schools should instead encourage free speech by setting up special locations on their premises for demonstrations and public debate along with appointed times. Then, students can debate what is important to them within an atmosphere of liberty and encouragement while learning how to test the boundaries of freedom in a healthy way. Too bad our educators aren’t smart enough to figure out a solution on their own.