UK Interim Guidelines And Consultation On Prosecuting Cases Involving Social Networks

As we reported a few months back, Keir Starmer, the UK's Director of Public Prosecutions, made the remarkable suggestion that "the time has come for an informed debate about the boundaries of free speech in an age of social media." That debate has now arrived in the form of a UK consultation on "prosecutions involving social media communications," which takes as its starting point a series of interim guidelines for UK prosecutors when they are grappling with the freedom of speech issues raised by such cases. Here's how Starmer describes the initiative: 

On Techdirt.

UK Prosecutors Finally Acknowledge The Need For A Real Discussion About Free Speech Online

As Tim Cushing rightly noted earlier this week, the UK's "Free Speech" laws are more about the many things you can't say. As if to back up that view, in the last few days, there's been yet another case of somebody being arrested there for "an offensive Facebook page." 

On Techdirt.

Time to Abolish the Olympics?

This is incredible:

An American author and broadcaster claims Canadian border officials questioned her about whether she would discuss the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games at a speaking engagement Wednesday evening in Vancouver.

...

They began to search her notes and computers and those of her two colleagues, Ms. Goodman alleged. They then photographed the journalist and gave her a stipulation to leave the country by Friday night. They were delayed over an hour.

Now, there are two explanations for this. One, is that free speech no longer exists in Canada, which is news to me. I can't imagine even the most zealous border official was really trying *in principle* to restrict Ms Goodman's general right to talk about anything.

The other possibility, seems much more likely: that this was another epiphenomenon of the Olympic trademark insanity, whereby ordinary words are suddenly forbidden to lesser mortals - unless they pay.

In other words, it is precisely the privatisation of language that is used as an analogy for the patenting of algorithms - something so manifestly absurd, that no one would ever do it. Except that in the case of anything touching the Holy Olympics, we are already there.

If it's got to the point where border officials are checking people for "prohibited Olympic words" that they may be about to use without permission, perhaps it's time to call a halt to this corporatisation of language by abolishing the Olympics in their present, hypertrophied form. How about going back to basics: a competition in Olympia, for amateurs, with none of the commercial superstructure that has accrued: just pure sport?

Too much to ask? Yes, probably, until the widespread assumption that intellectual monopolies like copyright, patents and trademarks are in some sense *good* for us, despite all evidence to the contrary, is preceived to be the con-trick it really is.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca.

Wikileaks Tells It as It is

From a Wikileaks press release (not online as far as I can tell):

Wikileaks spokesman Jay Lim stated "The UK is increasingly viewed as medievil backwater with the worst speech protections in the Western world. We deplore the arrest of members of a registered political party for distributing what is clearly a political pamphlet supporting political policy positions."

"Medievil" just about sums it up....

Why ICANN Is Evil, Part 58697

I've been tracking the goings-on at ICANN, which oversees domain names and many other crucial aspects of the Internet, for many years now, and I've yet to see anything good come out of the organisation. Here's someone else who has problems with them:

In this Article, I challenge the prevailing idea that ICANN's governance of the Internet's infrastructure does not threaten free speech and that ICANN's governance of the Internet therefore need not embody special protections for free speech. I argue that ICANN's authority over the Internet's infrastructure empowers it to enact regulations affecting speech within the most powerful forum for expression ever developed. ICANN cannot remain true to the democratic norms it was designed to embody unless it adopts policies to protect freedom of expression. While ICANN's recent self-evaluation and proposed reforms are intended to ensure compliance with its obligations under its governance agreement, these proposed reforms will render it less able to embody the norms of liberal democracy and less capable of protecting individuals' fundamental rights. Unless ICANN reforms its governance structure to render it consistent with the procedural and substantive norms of democracy articulated herein, ICANN should be stripped of its decision-making authority over the Internet's infrastructure.

Strip, strip, strip. (Via IGP blog.)