{"id":19510,"date":"2013-03-19T12:37:24","date_gmt":"2013-03-19T17:37:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=19510"},"modified":"2013-03-19T12:37:24","modified_gmt":"2013-03-19T17:37:24","slug":"new-british-press-control-rules-to-apply-to-the-internet-the-whole-internet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2013\/03\/19\/new-british-press-control-rules-to-apply-to-the-internet-the-whole-internet\/","title":{"rendered":"New British press control rules to apply to the internet … the whole<\/em> internet"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Forbes<\/em> Tim Worstall explains why the British government’s new Ministry of Truth<\/del><\/font> press censorship body will have effective reach across the entire internet:<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t what they think they\u2019ve done, this is true. And it\u2019s also not what they intended to do (or at least I hope they didn\u2019t mean to do this) but it is still what they\u2019ve done. They\u2019ve passed a law which effectively censors the entire world\u2019s media. And they\u2019ve done this simply because they are ignorant of the very laws they\u2019re trying to change. Which is, I think you\u2019ll agree, a little disturbing, that politicians would casually negate press freedom just because they don\u2019t know what they\u2019re doing.<\/p>\n

[. . .]<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a standard Common Law assumption that publication does not take place where the printing presses (or servers etc) are. Publication takes place where something is made available to be read or seen. We\u2019ve even had two recent cases that show this. Rachel Ehrenfeld published a book in the US and yet was still sued for libel in London. For a few copies of that book had made it over to England and thus it was deemed that publication had taken place where English libel law prevailed. Just in case you think that this is some English peculiarity there was a very similar case with Dow Jones in Australia. Something was published in New York. But it was read in Australia (remarkably, by the man the piece was about, he downloaded it) and this was sufficient for the Australian courts to agree that therefore the potential libel had occurred in Oz and should be tried under Oz law.<\/p>\n

This is even clearer with reference to child pornography laws. \u201cProduction\u201d of child pornography includes the act of downloading such. For before it was downloaded there was one copy, on the server. Once downloaded, there are two, one on the server, the other in the browser. Thus the downloading is in itself the production of that pornography. This very point is drawn from the standard Common Law principles about publication.<\/p>\n

Therefore, it doesn\u2019t matter where your servers are. For that\u2019s not what defines publication. It also doesn\u2019t matter who the material is aimed at: nor even what language it is in. Publication happens if someone in the UK downloads whatever it is. That, in itself, is the act of publication.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Forbes Tim Worstall explains why the British government’s new Ministry of Truth press censorship body will have effective reach across the entire internet: This isn\u2019t what they think they\u2019ve done, this is true. And it\u2019s also not what they intended to do (or at least I hope they didn\u2019t mean to do this) but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,9,10,28],"tags":[459,224,58,661],"class_list":["post-19510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-law","category-liberty","category-media","tag-censorship","tag-freedomofthepress","tag-internet","tag-regulation"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-54G","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19510"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19510\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19511,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19510\/revisions\/19511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}