DISQUS

Laurel Papworth · 10 months ago

Not surprisingly, I disagree with you in every respect. Hah!

1. There is no such thing as social 'media' in a chat context. There are people chatting in social situations that look like media to anyone not used to chatting online,but please, differentiate between social media (articles, distribution) and social discussion (chat, backchannel). Bloggers ranting about overturning laws is not the same as someone saying "I fucking wanna kill whoever did that" on a forum.

2. Copyright is relatively new to society, hardly protected anyone when it was around, outlived it's original usefulness quickly and should be dispelled with. It's not 1920 and trying to fix radio broadcasting popular music, it's people taking culturally relevant material and making it meaningful for their time. Shakespeare and Socrates never minded. Get over it. Patents were to get rid of Guilds. We need new tools for a social economy.

3. The thought police will never win the battle of what you can and can't say to your friends. And to the upcoming generation, thinking about forwarding an email, a voicemail or a facebook wall post is natural. Most people follow less than a hundred people in their online social networks - it IS the pub - they are chatting in a quiet moment with each other. NOT building large networks for media distribution. You are confusing tools with behaviour.

4. Lot's and lots of cases of people publishing stuff that is porn in one state, from another state and getting away with it in the US. In the Mohammad example, there is a lot more damage to be done by NOT printing up the cartoon, but by keeping it online.

5. The community will self-regulate. Archaic laws -such as finding news-virgins to sit on juries will die. The community will not accept uncracked iPhones or other corporate attempts to restrict what it wants to do unnecessarily -and the crowd is faster and hungrier than any other body. But nor will it be anarchy -groups patrol and self-regulate. We'll see a case soon of 100,000 members dobbing in someone - I've seen it in World of Warcraft on the forums, I expect it to move to "real" crimes too. But keeping the naming and shaming to a minimum is tricky.

Look into the HD DVD crack story - 45 google hits on the 'net. 45 cease and desist orders sent out. 9 million google hits today - way to go to inflame the "mob". Not scaleable, not manageable, by our current laws. And saying it SHOULD be so, won't make it so.

Incidentally, one of the main things I do is show moderators/admins how to empower themselves in a world where they have very few tools for tracking, managing and deleting rogue elements. It CAN be done but not in a pre-emptive way.

The world changed and you are still fighting for it to stay structured the way you understand it. Cheers :)

Kimota · 10 months ago

Welcome Laurel - sure you're not related to my ex-wife? ;)

I'm not fighting to save anything, least of all the staus quo. What my arguments are about are the actual practicalities of the internet and explaining how and why things won't or can't change along the lines you present. Doesn't matter whether I think one thing or another, there are specific reasons why the law is the way it is and the internet does not provide reasons to be exempted - in fact it provides more reasons to be more stringent, which is what I feel may happen if we don't get a grip on this stuff.

As for most of your arguments, I believe I answered them in the post with supporting evidence, particularly why online chat can never be exempted from the law as it stands.

Stephen Collins · 10 months ago

Here's my take on the issues you raise, all of which need a different treatment.

1. The notion of publication needs redefinition. I agree with Laurel on the nature of conversation - online is much like the pub. However matters such as defamation, protection of defendants and matters sub judice must maintain importance.

2. Both copyright and distribution models are broken. Lawrence Lessig has it straight. To argue otherwise is misguided and in denial.

3. The model here is broken too. Laurel is right when she says the thought police must not be allowed to govern what we can say and where. However, where speech about something is controlled by a court order, the law must prevail and takedown notices should be enforceable. Whether that needs reexamination is another matter.

4.Trying to control or prosecute the speech of a person beyond the limit of your jurisdiction is impossible. Don't try. Any law trying to say or do otherwise is tilting at windmills.

5. As Laurel says, well-managed communities are largely self-policing. Most of this argument is usually couched in copyright terms - iPhone cracks, media distribution, etc. To deny that the laws in this area are broken here and in other jurisdictions is ridiculous. Nanny stating in particular, as our government seems wont to do (not just in terms of the clean feed censorship, but also on issues such as the banning of films like Baise Moi) is frankly, dumb and evil.

Yes, we need to exhibit adult reasoning and responsibility when using any tool, whether that's a power saw or the Internet. But for lawmakers, copyright holders or whomever else to insist that the laws as they stand are relevant or adequate to handle 21st Century society and the way the world has fundamentally changed since moving online is blind and arguably stupid.

Hmm. I've ranted now. I should turn this into a blog post...

Ned Dwyer · 10 months ago

Great article, even better that you've challenged some of the twitterati's general thinking on these issues.

So is there going to be some kind of public debate (other than Sunrise) on these issues? Can we pit the social media peeps against the government ministers or advisors and the lawyers? THAT I would like to see.

Jack Plug · 9 months ago

Gee Laurel if copyright should be "dispelled with" then why would you post a copyright notice on your blog.

So why don't you start the process ans "dispell" copyright on your work and put your money where your mouth is.

"Yes my work is copyright but it’s not “ALL RIGHTS RESERVED”.

You may take the work, but attribute me please. It becomes very obvious very quickly to people if you don’t attribute the original thinker. Consider the copycat Twitter Agencies if you will. :P

You can’t use it for commercial gain. If anyone is going to sell my stories, to a media company or to a paying public, it will be me. However feel free to contact me for a licence."

Roger · 8 months ago

Actually in the UK if the material is just vulgar insults on a forum, that would not constitute defamation (so says the the Lord Justice July 2008). Also, in the UK for obscene material, the IWF must act as expert witnesses, and they won't do that for foreign hosted material. Thus the CPS won't prosecute material hosted aboard. It isn't practicable to do so. It would take too long to hunt down all material being uploaded to foreign websites by UK residents! So it is impossible to monitor. A recent case under the OPA showed how a usenet (alt.binaries) writer has been taken to court. alt.binaries uses a local host, i.e. hosted in the UK. This business about three countries and being liable in all three is really more to do with financial transactions rather than publishing laws. I don't think that there would be any reason for US authorities to want an extradition unless the crime involved hacking the CIA computers. There are also billions of websites and thus its impossible to keep tabs on all of them.