June 22nd, 2010
It’s hard to imagine these days, but remember back in the nineties when the web started to go mainstream and all sort of not very IT aware companies took their first baby steps on it? Remember how quite a few of those companies just didn’t understand linking and how some of those tried to get their lawyers to forbid socalled deeplinking, wanting to gain control of whoever was linking to them and requiring them to only link to their homepage, rather than “deeplinking” to a specific page on the site? Well, it seems in some remote corner of Belgium it’s still 1995, as the national railways have forbidden links to anything but their welcome page (in dutch).
Specifically, the NMBS doesn’t like it when you link to this page (Dutch), explaining how you can get compensation when your train is delayed. At least one blogger who linked to this page got a cease and desist letter for their troubles (Dutch again). Very likely the NMBS doesn’t have a leg to stand on, but I’m not a lawyer and the chilling effect is bad enough. Even if a blogger could win a lawsuit, the question is whether they could afford one. It’s all deeply silly, symptomatic of a company that doesn’t understand the internet or why they should be doing more with it.
Categories: IT is not magic pixiedust, Law in action
April 6th, 2010
The supposed libel case George Galloway has mounted against David Toube for a comment he left at Socialist Unity has now dragged the latter in:
Many readers will be aware that George Galloway and Kevin Ovenden are each seeking redress from David Toube of Harry’s Place for a libellous comment made by David on this blog back in December.
Last Wednesday I received a letter from Mr Toube’s solicitors saying that should either or both of these libel actions proceed then David Toube will seek to join me as a third-party (part 20) defendant and will seek full indemnity from me in respect of all costs and other liabilities that Mr Toube incurs under the Civil Liability (contribution) Act 1978.
In essence, despite all his huffing and puffing about free speech, David Toube has the chutzpah to publish comments on this blog, and then when faced with the consequences, is seeking to hold me legally responsible for his own actions.
In fact I do consider that the comment made by David T was libellous, and I sought to mitigate that libel by refuting the inaccurate content in subsequent comments on the same thread. This blog does not operate pre-publication moderation, so David Toube’ comment appeared and was read by hundreds of people without any participation whatsoever by the administraors of Socialist Unity blog.
If David Toube’s legal argument is successful, it will mean the end of blogging as we know it, as the burden of responsibility for libel will be shifted to the registered proprietors of blogs, and people posting libellous comments will seek to hide behind the blog owners to avoid legal responsibility.
Unfortunately for Andy, his assumptions here are slightly wrong. The way he puts it, he seems to think that David Toube’s action to drag Socialist Union into this suit is wrong, as if without this action he couldn’t be hold liable for David’s alleged libelous comment. However, this is not true. Had Galloway wanted to, he could’ve held Socialist Unity responsible from the start. Now I’m not a lawyer, so treat the following with all due skepticism.
There’s a semi-famous libel case called Godrey vs Demon Internet 1999 which already gives that chilling effect that Andy worries about. In that case Demon was held responsible for an Usenet post not even posted but propagated through their servers and the judge found that the “common carrier” defence Demon mounted (i.e. you can’t hold the post office responsible for a libelous letter) wasn’t adequate.
Which means that any blog with comments can probably be hold responsible for its commenters already, more so if said blog already screens comments, as Socialist Unity does, as it has banned several commenters for being disruptive (including yours truly). For Andy therefore to think he has no part in this when he led the allegedly libelous comment stand, when he has deleted other comments (including ones for possible libelous intent) and even banned people, is somewhat premature. The idea is that the more you filter, the more you become like a publisher, hence responsible for the content of the comments you allow, whether you agree with them or not. As such, a blog can therefore have a duty of care to remove comments that are held to be libelous at the very least when they are pointed out to them, or face the consequences in court.
At the time the judgement in Godfrey vs Demon 1999 was given there was somewhat of a panic about what this meant in practical terms. Should all Usenet post be pre-vetted, or would Usenet be dropped by internet providers as not worth the trouble? The upshot was that many ISPs started removing posts as soon as they got complaints about them, which is a course also open to blogs. This may have a chilling effect, in that malicious people could complain about reasonable comments then removed by blog owners fearful of costly ligitation, but I’m not sure how much of an effect it has had so far…
Now personally I think Galloway has had some grounds to complaint about David’s original comment, but think he should have complained to Andy/Socialist Unity directly, as David himself couldn’t remove the comment anyway, only ask SU to do so for him. The more so considering the ties Socialist Unity has to Respect and Galloway anyway.
Categories: IT is not magic pixiedust, Law in action
Tags: David Taube, libel, Socialist Unity
December 4th, 2008
Jean Charles de Menezes, murdered by police now more than three years ago is once again denied justice, as the coroner in the inquest to his death ruled out a verdict of unlawful killing:
The family of Jean Charles de Menezes walked out of his inquest yesterday as the coroner ruled the jury was forbidden from considering whether he was unlawfully killed.
Sir Michael Wright said he did not believe the testimony justified him allowing them to return a verdict which was tantamount to accusing police officers of murder or manslaughter.
As the De Menezes family and their supporters walked out the coroner said he knew the jury’s hearts would go out to the dead man’s mother, Maria Otone de Menezes. “But these are emotional reactions, ladies and gentlemen, and you are charged with returning a verdict based on evidence,” he said.
And so the establishment once again take care of its own. Can’t embarass the police, especially after they have been so obliging to the government recently. No wonder Craig Murray is furious, especially about this shitty bit of reasoning from “sir” Michael wright:
But he urged caution on judging anything they viewed as lying too harshly. “You must decide whether the person has lied or made an honest mistake. If you can prove that the witness has lied you should bear … in mind people tell lies for a variety of reasons, not necessarily to put their own part.
“Do please excuse the police for not just murdering Jean, but lying about it and covering up their murder almost from the moment his body hit the floor”. Disgusting, but it fits in with how this case has been treated from the start. This has never been about getting justice for Jean, but about exculpating the police for his murder. It’s an old, old pattern in British policing, which has a shameful record of wrongful killings and people dying in its custody and getting away with it. It’s the other side of the same coin that saw antiterrorist police arrest Damien Green MP. Three years ago the government allowed the police their ritual murder to relieve their frustration, last week we saw the police returning the favour through a nicely staged bit of political intimidation.
Both cases sent a message to the British public. In the de Menezes case it’s “we can and will murder you with impunity if we feel like”, in Green’s case it’s “it doesn’t matter how powerful you are, step out of line and we’ll squash you”. With Green, he himself may “only” suffer a humiliating and frightening arrest and questioning, but to everbody with less clout than him this message comes through loud and clear.
Together these two cases are the clearest indication of police state Britain, but they’re just the tip of the iceberg. As Jamie said, talking about the Green case:
People have a crude idea that a police state involves a leader ordering the cops to arrest his enemies. It’s mainly an environment where the police have expanded powers over the general administration of the state which they can exercise with a large degree of autonomy. Their turf gets bigger, and is defended and expanded more aggressively.
Which is exactly what has happened under New Labour. From the very beginning they’ve used the police and the justice system as a political tool, unleashing a torrent of ill-thought out, unworkable policies to curry favour with the tabloids, an equally large torrent of dodgy statistics and press releases to show the succes of these policies, all topped with the occasional potemkin showpiece of serious policing. After September 11 these tendencies only worsened. Remember the tanks at Heathrow the day before Parliament had to vote on the War on Iraq? Long before the British establishment finally noticed last week therefore the police had been politicised and the murder of Jean charles de Menezes as well as the arrest of Damien Green are a logical outcome of this. New Labour flacks may not even been lying when they insist Green’s arrest was the police’s own idea, but the responsibility is still theirs.
Categories: Autoritarianism, Jean Charles de Menezes, Law in action, UK politics
Tags: Jean Charles de Menezes, Michael Wright
November 22nd, 2008
For some reason –probably all the hoohah over John Sargent– I missed the news last Monday that Lord Bingham, onetime senior law lord of the UK, criticised the War on Iraq as “a serious violation of international law and of the rule of law”:
Summarising Lord Goldsmith’s reasoning, Lord Bingham said: “A reasonable case could be made that resolution 1441 was capable in principle of reviving the authorisation in resolution 678, but the argument could only be sustainable if there were ‘strong factual grounds’ for concluding that Iraq had failed to take the final opportunity. There would need to be ‘hard evidence’.”
Ten days later, in a Parliamentary written answer issued on March 17, 2003, Lord Goldsmith said it was “plain” that Iraq had failed to comply with its disarmament obligations and was therefore in material breach of resolution 687. Accordingly, the authority to use force under resolution 678 had revived.
The former judge then quoted the conclusion to Lord Goldsmith’s Parliamentary statement: “Resolution 1441 would, in terms, have provided that a further decision of the Security Council to sanction force was required if that had been intended. Thus, all that resolution 1441 requires is reporting to and discussion by the Security Council of Iraq’s failures, but not an express further decision to authorise force.”
Lord Bingham was not impressed. “This statement was, I think flawed in two fundamental respects,” he said.
“First, it was not plain that Iraq had failed to comply in a manner justifying resort to force and there were no strong factual grounds or hard evidence to show that it had: Hans Blix and his team of weapons inspectors had found no weapons of mass destruction, were making progress and expected to complete their task in a matter of months.
“Secondly, it passes belief that a determination whether Iraq had failed to avail itself of its final opportunity was intended to be taken otherwise than collectively by the Security Council.”
Which is more or less what every anti-war activist already knew anyway. Like the dirty dossiers and the claims about Iraq being thirty minutes away from attacking Britain, Goldsmith’s legal advice was always meant as a figleaf for a decision already taken. There was never the intent on the part of Blair to really test the legality of an invasion; his former roomie knew what he wanted and so he delivered it. Had Goldsmith’s argument been made in a court of law it wouldn’t have passed the laugh test. As long as it was good enough to convince the doubters in parliament and the press it was good enough.
The runup to the War on Iraq made hollow phrases of democracy and rule of law, as the first was ignored while the second was perverted to make possible this war. It made clear what the population’s role was: to shut up, vote every few years without expecting anything important to change and to let the important decisions be made by our betters. And then Hazel “bloody” Blears has the gall to lecture us about about political disengagment and the negativity of bloggers?
Categories: Law in action, War Lies, War on Iraq
Tags: Hazel Blears, Lord Goldsmith
September 22nd, 2008
Oh look, it’s another pointless inquest to establish what we already know, that Jean Charles de Menezes was murdered, that his killers got away with it and of course, that this inquest is “not a forum to determine
culpability or compensation, still less to dispense punishment”. It’s not as if anybody important was killed and we can’t have the police be afraid to murder innocent people if they really really believe they’re terrorists…
The inquest will hear from 75 witnesses, including 48 serving police officers who have been granted anonymity, and Tube passengers.
The first police officer will appear later in the week.
Among those who will be speaking for the first time will be policemen codenamed C2 and C12, the two specialist firearms officers who shot Mr de Menezes dead.
Far be it for me to say that this is the perfect opportunity for some spontaneous vigilante justice, but what the hey.
Categories: Jean Charles de Menezes, Law in action
Tags: Jean Charles de Menezes
June 18th, 2008
I blogged about the socalled “lyrical terrorist”last year, who was arrested an prosecuted for writing bad jihadi poetry as well as having some dodgy books on her bookshelves. Eventually she was convicted under the 2000 terrorism act, but appealed and now she has had her conviction quashed:
Samina Malik, 24, was given a nine-month suspended jail sentence at the Old Bailey last December after she became the first woman to be found guilty of storing material likely to be of use for terrorism.
Malik, of Southall, west London, adopted her nickname because of extremist lyrics she wrote on till receipts, but was never prosecuted over her poetry.
The lord chief justice, Lord Phillips, sitting in the court of appeal with Mr Justice Goldring and Mr Justice Plender, quashed the conviction after the Crown conceded that it was unsafe. In his judgment, Lord Phillips said the court decided that an offence would only be committed if the material concerned was likely to have provided practical assistance to a person either committing or preparing for terrorism. Propagandist or theological material did not fall within the legislation, he said.
“We consider that there is a very real danger that the jury became confused and that the prosecution have rightly conceded that this conviction is unsafe.”
In other words, once again it’s the judges that have to clean up the mess New Labour made passing badly drafted laws.
Categories: Law in action, Security theatre
Tags: Lyrical Terrorist, Security theatre
