[infowar.de] Internet censorship coming to a computer near EU

[Bodo Staron <bodo -! - staron - de>]

Infowar.de, http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~bendrath/liste.html
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Ein etwas eingefärbter Artikel, zur Info.

http://www.dfn.org/_currentevents/_europe/InternetCensorship/InternetCensorship.html

Internet censorship coming to a computer near EU

by A. E. Huggett, Digital Freedom Network





In his 1964 seminal work, Understanding Media, media analyst Marshall
Mcluhan coined his famously cryptic line of "The Medium is the
Message" whereby to the popular mind he sounded incredibly deep and
totally shallow all at once. However, his message of how media affects
culture and society is even more relevant today given the dominance of
the Web on mass communications, commerce, and the free and unregulated
exchange of information world wide. The Web can literally be seen as
the physical manifestation of Carl Jung's Collective Subconscious
whereby if it's been thought, it has a Web page.



For the average, non-technical user the terms Web and Internet are
exchangeable although the Web is a sub-division of the Internet. There
are five divisions of the Internet: email, ftp (file transfer
protocol), telnet, the Web, and I forget the last division but no,
it's not spam, porno, or pop-ups. Unfortunately, international
socialism, as evidenced by the unelected bureaucrats of the EU is
using the pornography excuse along with race hate and religious
intolerance to censor and control what's on the Internet.



Over in Euroland the Euro-socialists are seriously going about
establishing a real censorship not seen since Hitler's Third Reich;
perhaps it's not a coincidence that in the UK, among certain
conservative circles, the EU is often referred to as the Fourth Reich.
The EU just passed an amendment to their Convention on Cybercrime that
outlaws any speech these thought crime specialists deem as "any
written material, any image or any other representation of ideas or
theories, which advocates, promotes or incites hatred, discrimination
or violence, against any individual or group of individuals, based on
race, colour, descent or national or ethnic origin, as well as
religion if used as pretext for any of these factors." If passed into
law by the various national legislatures which comprise the EU, online
books, such as Oriana Fallaci's The Rage and Pride, which is an honest
and impassioned examination of Islamic immigration into the West or
even The Bible, which is examined and reproduced extensively on the
Web, could be deemed "hate speech" by Muslims in France and homosexual
activists in the UK respectively.



Any site which tries to honestly discuss and debate illegal
immigration, the Iraqi War, cultural clashes, homosexuality, Israel's
right to existance, or even conservatism itself can be declared a hate
site. In the EU, as in any socialist society, politically correct
speech shifts constantly as expediency, vengence, and fashion dictate.
A year before this Convention on Cybercrime amendment was proposed,
British server companies anticipated the coming censorship and started
pressuring sites whose contents made them nervous. Web sites devoted
to nostalgia, which carry the innocently charming children's books by
Helen Bannerman or items about Golliwogs, felt the heat. Now,
according to EU censors, even suspect or disapproved of links on a Web
page devoid of what the Brussels bureacrats deem inflammatory can get
the original site in trouble.



This is the same mind set that passed an anti-blasphemy law in regards
to itself in 1999 making it a crime to criticize or mock the EU.
(Blasphemy according to the EU is extreme if you even dare criticize
its monetary policies.) Whether the speech and thought crime
inspectors of the EU will apply the Cybercrime amendment to all sites
equally is open to speculation. Non-white ethnic groups are deemed
incapable of being bigoted among the politically correct even though
that is a universal human emotion. Asian Indians, as well as ancient
Greek artifacts, use a decorative symbol of Life often mistaken for a
swastika and censoring this symbol because it is similar to the nazi
symbol would cause diplomatic and educational nightmares. Any
objection to illegal immigration is tagged "xenophobic" and perfectly
decent people of good will have been called "racists" for daring to
question non-European cultural practices. Historians and history buffs
could face the charge of racism and nazism if they collect WWII
memorabilia.



The EU also demanded that American sites follow suit even though our
freedom of speech is protected by the First Amendment. That means if
an EU Web site carries links to American sites, which carry
information or images of which the EU censors do not approve, that EU
site can be punished. According to the Committee of Ministers
responsible for this amendment, "The emergence of international
communication networks like the Internet provide certain persons with
modern and powerful means to support racism and xenophobia and enables
them to disseminate easily and widely expressions containing such
ideas. In order to investigate and prosecute such persons,
international cooperation is vital."



In 2000 French anti-racist groups demanded that Yahoo! remove Nazi
memerobilia from its auction site because while the sales were aimed
at American buyers from an American site, the objects themselves were
still accessible to French Web surfers. An American judge, U.S.
District Judge Jeremy Fogel, ruled that Yahoo! was an American site
protected by the First Amendment and did not have to bow to European
demands.


Yahoo! lawyer, Mary Catherine Worth's three year old comments are
still valid today when she said, "This has very broad implications for
everyone, not only companies but also for individuals who operate Web
pages here in the United States. Today the judge basically said it was
not consistent with the laws of the United States for another nation
to regulate speech for a U.S. resident within the United States."


It's now three years later and that ruling still rankles the Europeans
who are gearing up to block American sites much as China and Cuba do.
According to Spanish Internet lawyer, Carlos Sánchez Almeida, "If
European countries adopt the (anti-racism) amendment of the European
Council in their legislatures, they'll also be able to block websites
from the U.S.A., despite the First Amendment."


Spain has already passed its own laws which allow their censors to
block American sites which they deem non-compliant with their national
laws. While the First Amendment is jealously guarded in the US, it
should be remembered that in these last three years liberal judicial
activism from local courts all the way up to the US Supreme Court has
infected recent decisions. Associate Supreme Court Justice Stephen
Breyer is even on record saying that globalism is the driving force in
his decisions in bringing American Constitutional law into line with
foreign, ie. European laws. While it would not be easy to skirt the
First Amendment, it could be done obliquely by putting the same
pressure on server companies as experienced in the UK. As the Belgian
lawyer for the Electronic Privacy and Information Center, Cedric
Laurant, theorized, "This could lead to a clash of cultures. What will
happen if the French police start asking local U.S. police to give
them information about the people running a site?"








Digital Freedom Network, Copyright © 1997 - 2003





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