FC: Response from European socialist on treaty banning "hate" sites

From: Declan McCullagh (declanat_private)
Date: Thu May 03 2001 - 07:56:46 PDT

  • Next message: Declan McCullagh: "FC: Antitrust nominee gets no questions about Microsoft suit"

    [Ivar Tallo is the Council of Europe member who was quoted in the two news 
    reports I forwarded. (http://www.politechbot.com/p-01977.html) I thank him 
    for this clarification. --Declan]
    
    *******
    
    Date: Wed, 2 May 2001 21:48:17 +0200 (EET)
    From: Ivar Tallo <ivarat_private>
    To: <declanat_private>
    cc: <daveat_private>
    Subject: about the cybercrime convention
    
    Hi there,
    the exchange that you are having about curbing freedom of speech in
    internet is unfortunately based on the impression that somebody from
    international newsagencies got from Assembly's press-release.
    What happened in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe was
    that the French delegation made amendments to my report (or opinion to be
    exact) where they demanded that ban of hate speech etc should be put into
    the text of the convention. I did not support it on various grounds which
    I can explain to you separately when you are interested. I had made a
    compromise proposal that these kinds of additional criminalizations should
    be put into separate additional protocol so, that the convention would not
    be put into controversy itself. For many deputies this compromise was not
    good enough and they tried to get support for it in various political
    fractions and in the legal affaris committee. They failed. They failed to
    get the support of the Assembly as well, though they lost the vote with a
    very narrow margin (2 votes). The fun part was that French delegation that
    usually ignores most of the work of the assembly was there with full
    power. They wanted sort of french version of internet based on their
    recent struggle with Yahoo. I argued that there can be no French or
    European internet and without the support of the USA the convention will
    go the way French Minitel has gone. The assembly supported my position as
    I already mentioned and I am very proud of the wise decision made by the
    Assembly. It is unfortunate that the news-item about it has not done
    justice to the intense and interesting discussions taking place,
    
    with best regards,
    yours truly "Estonian Socialist" Ivar Tallo,
    in reality just a member of Estonian Social Democratic Party Moodukad and
    member of Estonian Parliament and the Parliamentary Assembly of the
    Council of Europe
    
    P.S. if you are interested, I'll be happy to forward you my speeches in
    the Council and in the hearing that I organized in Paris in the beginning
    of March. bzw. one of the guest speakers I invited to this event was also
    Bruce McConnell (the head of McConnell International from your country).
    
    
    
    
    -------------------------------------------------------------------------
    POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list
    You may redistribute this message freely if it remains intact.
    To subscribe, visit http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html
    This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/
    -------------------------------------------------------------------------
    



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Thu May 03 2001 - 08:38:50 PDT