UK Court Says It Has Jurisdiction Over Racist Material Stored On California Server... If Content Created In The UK
from the the-long-fiber-optic-arms-of-the-law dept
We've had numerous posts lately about jurisdiction questions raised online, and PRK alerts us to a case in the UK where two men were convicted for publishing racist information online. The jurisdictional question came in because the content itself was hosted on servers in California. The court said that UK law still applied because the actual action of creating the content was done by the two men in the UK, and it was then just uploaded to the server elsewhere. While there are serious concerns over "libel tourism" type cases in the UK, in this case I can understand the reasoning behind the ruling. The actions themselves took place in the UK, so it does make sense to try the men there.Of course, there are some other issues related to the case, including the court saying it didn't matter whether or not anyone in the UK had actually seen the content -- which seems a bit odd. While the content ran afoul of some sort of hate speech laws in the UK, it does seem reasonable to ask whether or not the content itself was ever actually seen by anyone, but the court found otherwise:
"The point that there cannot be publication without a publishee is in our judgment fundamentally misconceived," he said. "It is based on an irrelevant comparison with the law of libel. Libel is a tort or civil wrong where it is necessary for the claimant to prove that the words complained of were published of him and were defamatory of him ... the offences of displaying, distributing or publishing racially inflammatory written material do not require proof that anybody actually read or heard the material."
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Filed Under: california, jurisdiction, uk
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is this
i am thinking of cases where US law has aledgedly been brocken in the UK or by a UK citizen, the US courts claim jurisdiction and even attempt to get our citizens in to the USA for charges. Nice to see it work the other way a few more like this and watch the courts do a Uturn. maybe.
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lets try that again
id say im pretty screwed if i travel to the us and try and claim it if they know its there
BUT heres a kicker
in canada our law says that whatever where ever its done on the net were responsible
this is primarily one of them to catch sicko porn weirdies
it does mean if i host a hacker site in the usa they cant do shit to me cause local law does superceed it
aint that special
im a citizen of Canada NOT USA is how the rational goes, thus our laws first , anything else next
kinda can see it protecting me a little if we had a govt that gave a damn.
how this us law will however be used
think caching
think about data being routed its touching there soil so anyway it can touch USA its this law. time to start sending big penis pics through the usa but not to anyone in the usa
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What if someone writes about their annoyances or feelings or thoughts at home, and never shows it to anyone else?
Consider: A person writes down their feelings about someone else. This just happens to include language that could be considered "racially inflammatory written material". Does this mean that if someone else finds out about what was written down (they don't even have to see it), the person who wrote it down can be tried for "publishing racist information"?
Or someone could just accuse someone else of creating "racially inflammatory written material".
Based on this: "the offences of displaying, distributing or publishing racially inflammatory written material do not require proof that anybody actually read or heard the material", no proof is required that it exists, just that someone thought about "displaying, distributing or publishing" it?
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Have you ever heard of freedom of speech? Freedom of speech is not freedom of the speech you like but freedom of the speech you hate. Any other way of looking at the issue is hypocrisy, don't you think?
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Re: Freedom of Speech
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Check your facts
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Masters of our domain...
Glad we cleared that up. I thought it was an unanswerable question, but it looks like the lawmakers over on that tiny insignificant island have mastered the unmasterable.
PS - UK, your food stinks and your teeth are crooked.
CBMHB
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Re: Masters of our domain...
If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is there to hear it, how will the lawyer know to sue it? How will the police know to cuff it?
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Where did you press submit? Where did it go?
The act of writing the content was carried out in the UK and would be subject to UK laws. In this case, the act of "publishing" does not specify where it was sent, stored etc. Separately, the content itself would be stored in the US and would be subject to US federal and local laws.
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Re: Where did you press submit? Where did it go?
What if the guy just wrote that piece of racist text on a piece of paper and then an American friend of his went back home and published it for him? Should he be found guilty? Or, what if they had a racist talk and the American was so convinced by the Brit's arguments that when he went back home, he published it himself? Should the Brit be found guilty of that maybe? In both instances he did it in the UK, so, by your reasoning, he broke the law of the land and should be punished.
I think you should make a difference between creating the content and publishing the content. The two are not synonymous. The creation happened in the UK but the publishing happened in the US, thus, outside the reach of the UK legal system... and it should stay that way.
Don't get me wrong... I'm not a racist, I don't even know what the guy wrote about and, most importantly, I don't condone racism. Nevertheless, I don't care about all of that because the issue here is a matter of principle and, in this instance, the Brits are wrong.
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Re: Re: Where did you press submit? Where did it go?
2. In the case of another person creating the content and publishing overseas (writing down the speech / ideas and posting it) then, no, the original person isn't responsible since there was no creation or intent to publish by him.
You see, it is not the act of publishing, it is the creation of hate speech with the intent to publish that is the offence.
Do keep up, dear boy.
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Re: Re: Re: Where did you press submit? Where did it go?
Well, that kind of laws are expected from a country that has no mention of free speech anywhere in its laws. What makes it despicable is that some of said country's citizens try to rationalize that as being a good thing.
If what you say is true, let me put up another hypothetical example: Let's say that our racist wrote down his racist text on that piece of paper because he was out in the woods and forgot his laptop at home. Nevertheless, he was intent on publishing that text as soon as he got back home. Being a stupid racist as he is, at some point during his trip he lost his piece of paper in the woods and some boar came along, crapped on it and his racist text disappeared as soon as the bacteria in the boar poop devoured the paper it was written on. In the mean time, the racist guy gets back home, discovered that he lost his piece of paper and because he's a busy little bigot doesn't find the time to rewrite it and, thus, fails to publish it. Nevertheless, the text had been created and it had been created with an intent to publish it.
So, following you reasoning, or the reasoning behind that outrageous law you're trying to defend, he is guilty as charged because he created the hate speech and he intended to publish it even if he never did publish it. It doesn't really matter that the only witnesses were some bugs, birds and a particular boar that had a bowel movement.
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It's not that odd. Think of it as child porn. Child pornography is illegal regardless of whether it is published. It's the content itself which is illegal, not the dissemination. Although the dissemination can be illegal too.
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enough
hate speech laws . . . thats ugly stuff
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The Greater Plan
2. Do not think hateful things.
3. Utopia.
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Re: The Greater Plan
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UK Court Says It Has Jurisdiction Over Racist Material Stored On California Server... If Content Created In The UK
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Re: Interval
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Thought Police
Once you start enshrining the ability to censor, no matter what the 'good' cause you have given up free speech.
The UK can no longer protect any expression of speech from other countries claiming that it violated their rules. they have forfeited any jurisdictional rights.
As to the example of child porn, you can write about it and publish, you can't create and publish images. Unlike speech/writing there are real consequences in the production of the images.
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freedom of speach
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