On Aug 25, 2004, at 12:13 PM, Bryon Daly wrote:
On Wed, 25 Aug 2004 11:00:01 -0700, Dave Land <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I disagree. If Yahoo was polluting a lake on the US/Canada border, would you argue that a Canadian court's attempt to bring the polluter to justice was saying that their laws override the U.S. Constitution? To the French, Yahoo is polluting a space we hold in common, the Internet. The French are concerned that Yahoo is shouting "Movie" in a crowded firehouse.
The problem with the "polluted lake" metaphor is that 1) on the
internet every nation
can and does have its own definition of "pollution", which may be diametrically
opposite another nation's, and 2) if you accept that nations have a
right to dictate
against "pollution" occurring *outside* their borders, then following
that to its logical
it, it gives all nations say over all internet content.
Yeah, it's sticky pretty much every way, and an interesting topic to me too partly because the net is such a major player in cultural conflicts. It's easy for me to imagine someone in Europe or Asia feeling overwhelmed by the flow of materials, much of which carry a distinctly American flavor.
Personally I find that troubling because American culture is simply not all-good, all the time, and I'd hate to live in a world where's there's one voice shouting one message.
The question I have is what to do about it -- what if France blocked Yahoo!? (Man, it's hard to properly punctuate a company whose name includes a punctuation mark.) Obviously there are *parts* of Yahoo! that couldn't be regarded as objectionable, so I can't imagine anyone wanting a full block.
And there it starts getting sticky again. Because then you've got an entire nation (or at least its public facilities) dictating what is and isn't considered acceptable information for its citizens to see. Of course we compromise when living in a society, but at some point compromise becomes egregious and oppressive, though when exactly that might happen can vary for individuals. (One of the compromises we accept is in determining how much compromise we accept.)
My concern is that it's not just businesses using the internet for
speech. Saying "a
big business is being expected to live in the real world." doesn't
cover all the cases.
What happens when it's not Yahoo getting fined, but a private person threatened
with arrest in France or Germany or China because his US web site
violates their
speech laws?
Seems to me that speech laws for corporations need to be made clearly separate from those for individuals. Corporations are not human beings and do not have any rights, at least no inherent ones, as we think humans do. The legal fiction that speaks of corporate "free speech" clouds the issue enormously.
Companies now are limited in what they can say -- for examle, tobacco companies cannot advertise that their products will make users immune to herpes, because it's a lie. In day-to-day matters individual people lie all the time.
Much more rigorously defined parameters would need to be developed before the discussion could really make sense, and I'd imagine those parameters would be pretty fiendish.
(Of course none of the foregoing would be putatively necessary at all if more individuals, including those who ran corporations, would behave in less shortsighted, self-centered ways.)
They can do that regardless of this court decision, but it'd be nice if the US legal system gave some better precedent in terms of protecting online free speech in the US from international prosecution rather than just saying they won't get involved unless the US legal system is invoked.
In situations like this it might make more sense to give some enforcement power to an international authority comprised of member nations from all over the world. Of course the US has decided the UN is bogus, so until we get a little national humility and get rid of a certain arrogant, cowboy Texan in DC, little will change.
-- WthmO
It's OK to take the flags down now and begin trying to think again. --
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