The ridiculousness of gag orders in the age of the internet
This might be the only country in the world that still thinks that they can block the publication of names of celebrities who have been accuses of crimes. And they can. At least from the public airwaves in Israel.
A famous Israeli singer (and draft dodger) is being investigated for taking advantage of underage girls. If you use Google, read blogs or Facebook (where I saw two identical pictures of him in the same place - one with his face scrambled), read anything from the Jewish community overseas, or watch Israel's Channel 1, you already know who this is.
But if you missed it, Channel 1 told the world last week. Let's go to the videotape.
Figured it out yet?
There's a blog in the US that has published that picture without the blurriness. You can search for it on Google. But if, like me, you're an Israeli, you're stuck publishing banal stories like
this one from the Jerusalem Post.
Almost
a week after a scandal involving a famous Israeli singer and
allegations of sex with underage girls broke, the singer, his father,
and two other men were brought in for questioning on Wednesday, Tel
Aviv police said.
In addition to the singer, those being investigated include the manager of a well-known radio station and a Tel Aviv promoter.
The case,
which broke last week and has dominated the media since, involves one of
Israel’s most famous singers and a complaint made by one 15-year-old girl that
she had sexual relations with him on more than one occasion.
The media has been rife with reports that
people close to the singer “scouted” girls at his concerts and invited them to
the parties, a report that police would not confirm on Sunday.
That
allegation has been followed by testimony from other girls believed to be linked
to the case, which was first opened months earlier.
In the meantime, the Israeli blogger who broke the story has been 'called in for questioning'....
Figured it out yet? Here's another hint.
The singer, for his part, said during a concert in Tel Aviv on
Thursday night that “I had a difficult day, I could have canceled, but music
conquers all.”
Hmmm.
Don't get me wrong - there is still a place for gag orders in society. For example, earlier this week it was disclosed that Israel has been holding an al-Qaeda specialist in biological weapons for the last three years. The news broke when the terrorist appealed to the Supreme Court to be released because he has not yet been placed on trial. The Supreme Court
refused to free him.
But a gag order is only in place when Israel's security is involved. When what's at stake is the (already sullied) reputation of a teen idol, the gag order is out of place. Better that the girls should be warned about him. The age of Big Brother 'protecting' us should have ended a long time ago.
UPDATE 3:55 PM
Eyal Golan's name has now been cleared for publication.
Labels: blogosphere, crime, internet regulation, Israeli national security, lawyers
Stop the American firewall
Imagine if one day, you couldn't reach Israel Matzav because it was blocked in your country. Imagine further that it was blocked without yours truly even being told about it and given a chance to respond. Or imagine that all of blogspot was blocked the same way. Those are all
possible results of bills working their way through the House and Senate right now (Hat Tip:
Red Tulips).
The legislation — the Protect IP Act, which has been introduced in the Senate, and a House version known as the Stop Online Piracy Act — have an impressive array of well-financed backers, including the United States Chamber of Commerce, the Motion Picture Association of America, the American Federation of Musicians, the Directors Guild of America, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and the Screen Actors Guild. The bills aim not to censor political or religious speech as China does, but to protect American intellectual property. Alarm at the infringement of creative works through the Internet is justifiable. The solutions offered by the legislation, however, threaten to inflict collateral damage on democratic discourse and dissent both at home and around the world.
The bills would empower the attorney general to create a blacklist of sites to be blocked by Internet service providers, search engines, payment providers and advertising networks, all without a court hearing or a trial. The House version goes further, allowing private companies to sue service providers for even briefly and unknowingly hosting content that infringes on copyright — a sharp change from current law, which protects the service providers from civil liability if they remove the problematic content immediately upon notification. The intention is not the same as China’s Great Firewall, a nationwide system of Web censorship, but the practical effect could be similar.
Abuses under existing American law serve as troubling predictors for the kinds of abuse by private actors that the House bill would make possible. Take, for example, the cease-and-desist letters that Diebold, a maker of voting machines, sent in 2003, demanding that Internet service providers shut down Web sites that had published internal company e-mails about problems with the company’s voting machines. The letter cited copyright violations, and most of the service providers took down the content without question, despite the strong case to be made that the material was speech protected under the First Amendment.
The House bill would also emulate China’s system of corporate “self-discipline,” making companies liable for users’ actions. The burden would be on the Web site operator to prove that the site was not being used for copyright infringement. The effect on user-generated sites like YouTube would be chilling.
YouTube, Twitter and Facebook have played an important role in political movements from Tahrir Square to Zuccotti Park. At present, social networking services are protected by a “safe harbor” provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which grants Web sites immunity from prosecution as long as they act in good faith to take down infringing content as soon as rights-holders point it out to them. The House bill would destroy that immunity, putting the onus on YouTube to vet videos in advance or risk legal action. It would put Twitter in a similar position to that of its Chinese cousin, Weibo, which reportedly employs around 1,000 people to monitor and censor user content and keep the company in good standing with authorities.
It's been a long time since I agreed with the Left on something (the writer, Rebecca MacKinnon, is a senior fellow at the
New America Foundation). It just happened.
Write to your Senators and Representative. Don't censor the internet.
Labels: censorship, internet regulation
Freedom of speech, Bir Zeit on the Hudson style
This is too good to check. A classmate from Bir Zeit on the Hudson sent me a promo for something called Columbia conversations online. They're holding a two-day celebration of the launch of something called the
Columbia Global Center in Istanbul, Turkey. The Columbia Alumni Association is presenting two webcasts as part of the celebration, one on Wednesday and one on Thursday, each at 11:30 am eastern time. The topic of the one on Wednesday is rich (Hat Tip:
Merrill W).
Is the Internet Too Free?
Moderated by Dean Nicholas Lemann and Sheila Coronel
A panel discussion on the perils of—and prospects for—journalism online. Is the Internet a safe place for original and independent reporting? Or is it a threatened space? Are the freedoms that citizens and journalists enjoy online more myth than reality?
In case you are wondering, Nicolas Lemann is the dean of the
Graduate school of Journalism. One would at least hope that his answer to the discussion question will be "no."
If any of you are interested in watching, go
here.
Labels: Bir Zeit on the Hudson, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, internet regulation
What could go wrong?
In light of the Wikileaks disclosures, a group of countries, led by Brazil, is pushing for the
United Nations to regulate the internet (Hat Tip:
Instapundit).
At a meeting in New York on Wednesday, representatives from Brazil called for an international body made up of Government representatives that would attempt to create global standards for policing the internet - specifically in reaction to challenges such as WikiLeaks.
The Brazilian delegate stressed, however, that this should not be seen as a call for a "takeover" of the internet.
India, South Africa, China and Saudi Arabia appeared to favour a new possible over-arching inter-government body.
What could go wrong?
Labels: Brazil, internet regulation, United Nations, Wikileaks
