Council of Europe's "right of reply" for the Internet draft: http://www.coe.int/t/e/human_rights/media/1_Intergovernmental_Co-operation/02_Draft_texts/MM-PUBLIC(2003)002%20E%20Right%20of%20reply.asp#TopOfPage --- http://news.com.com/2010-1071_3-1017333.html Why Europe still doesn't get the Internet By Declan McCullagh June 16, 2003, 4:00 AM PT One of the finest days in Internet law dawned on June 12, 1996, when U.S. District Judge Stewart Dalzell wrote an opinion that was remarkable for its clarity and prescience. At the time, Dalzell was serving on a three-judge panel that rejected the absurd Communications Decency Act as a violation of the First Amendment's guarantee of free expression. Dalzell recognized that the U.S. government's true fear of the Internet was not indecency or obscenity, but hypothetical worries about how "too much speech occurs in that medium." Dalzell and eventually the Supreme Court realized that the best way to foster the soon-to-be spectacular growth of the Internet was to reduce government regulation--not to increase it. Unfortunately, Europeans still haven't quite figured that out. The Council of Europe--an influential quasi-governmental body that drafts conventions and treaties--is meeting on Monday to finalize a proposal that veers in exactly the opposite direction. (It boasts 45 member states in Europe, with the United States, Canada, Japan and Mexico participating as non-voting members. Its budget is about $200 million a year, paid for by member governments.) The all-but-final proposal draft says that Internet news organizations, individual Web sites, moderated mailing lists and even Web logs (or "blogs"), must offer a "right of reply" to those whom an organization criticizes. With clinical precision, the council's bureaucracy had decided exactly what would be required. Some excerpts from its proposal: o "The reply should be made publicly available in a prominent place for a period of time (that) is at least equal to the period of time during which the contested information was publicly available, but, in any case, no less than for 24 hours." o Hyperlinking to a reply is acceptable. "It may be considered sufficient to publish (the reply) or make available a link to it" from the spot of the original mention. o "So long as the contested information is available online, the reply should be attached to it, for example through a clearly visible link." o Long replies are fine. "There should be flexibility regarding the length of the reply, since there are (fewer) capacity limits for content than (there are) in off-line media." [...remainder snipped...] ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ Like Politech? Make a donation here: http://www.politechbot.com/donate/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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