Re: [Bug-gne]External Servers and Illegal/Extreme Content

[Bob Dodd]

Just to add more wood to the fire, how do we propose to handle material
about people/organisations that are still alive? I'm thinking libel of
course...

I'm not even suggesting that there _is_ an answer to it, other than
avoiding the UK as a location for mirrors...

I guess this is one of those areas where Nupedia wins hands-down over
GNE: their peer review process significantly reduces the possibility of
libel. Not completely, but it goes a long way. Jimbo, do you have
anything else in place to handle this, or have you just not had
contemporary enough material to worry about yet?

For US (and much of the rest of the world...) readers, I'd better
explain the British libel laws: Anything you say or write down about a
living person or organisation, -you- must be able to prove in a court
of law. All it reqiures to end up in court, is that the person you
write about says "prove it".  The defendants are both the original
author AND ANY PUBLISHER OF THE LIBEL. In our case that's GNE (and as
of today at least, GNU).  It is the legal duty of the publisher to
ensure the accuracy of anything he publishes. "Oops, sorry, innocent
mistake" is not a legal defence... There are a lot of lawyers making a
lot of money in the UK as a result.

The UK also has laws covering data protection, so that if we hold
personal details on an individual, we must be registered with the UK
government, and have a clear system by which we people can check their
details for inaccuracies, and to insist upon corrections. So again, we
need to be wary about the content of submitted articles. Or goi
register properly with the Data Protection Registrar (actually they're
very helpful people and they would go out of their way to help us stay
legal).

Then comes medical records. It is an offence to publish a person's
medical records without their consent (very reasonably: I assume this
is true most places in the world). It's unlikely that we would ever
receive such a thing, but sometimes medical research papers and
unthinking doctors can inadvertantly give out too much detail of a
trial or research project. We had a case a few months back where a
doctor, talking about vCJD (the human version of mad cow disease) gave
out so much detail about one of his patients that he (and others) was
able to identify himself.

Next there are the obscenity laws, which are draconian in theor, but a
little more relaxed in practice. It does mean that you have to be very
careful with any material of a sexual nature, and anything involving
"moving images" needs a rating code from the censors (yes, we have
censors). 

Then there's our blasphemy laws. They're rather quaint and
old-fashioned and protect only christianity, but they are technically
quite draconian. Saying that the prophet Mohammed was a womanising
drunk is legal: saying jesus christ was a womanising drunk would get
you a small room with bars. Not that these laws get used much, but they
are there if some politician decides to kick up a fuss.

And just in case you think I may be finished: there are further
offences agains the state: breaches of the official secrets act (btw
the meaning of the 'e' numbers on the side of food cans is an official
secret...), breaches of confidentiality, and more excitingly treason...
It's still a treasonable offence in the UK to call for a republic, or
to encourage debate on the subject. Mind you, no-one has arrested me
for that one yet :-))

There are also other limitations: you cannot normally list criminal
offences commited by people when they were under the age of (I think)
12, or the names of victims in rape cases, or the names of anyone the
courts choose to protect.

There is one last category: some people who make a nuisace of
themsevles, normally becasue they are campainging incessantly against a
specific individual, can be stopped by the courst from publishing
_anything_ on certain subjects, and those orders also apply to
publishers.

Anyone used to US-style first ammendment laws is probably amazed by the
number of restrictions we place on free speech (there are probably
more, those were just the ones off the top of my head), but the
restrictions do exist and we are not the only western country with
similar sets of laws. Of all of those restrictions listed above, it is
the libel laws and direct court orders that affect us most, and frankly
all I can suggest is:

Choose the mirror locations very carefully indeed.

That said, some of those laws exist for good reason (medical records,
data protection etc.) and I feel strongly that we should incorporate
some of their ideas into our submissions process any way.

/Bob Dodd





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