Iceland Unanimously Approves Wikileaks Bill To Establish Free Speech Press Haven

from the good-news dept

paperbag was the first of a few of you to let us know that the Wikileaks-backed proposal in Iceland, to establish wide ranging free speech/free press/free expression rules has passed, unanimously. Basically, the law is designed to protect operations like Wikileaks, and encourage more and more protections for speech. While it's a great step forward for those who believe in protecting free expression, some have pointed out that that it probably won't have that much of an actual impact, because of the way most countries interpret jurisdictional issues. That is, outside of Iceland, those press freedoms may be effectively meaningless. I hope that's not actually true, but given the way some recent rulings have gone, I wouldn't be surprised. Still, from the standpoint of catalyzing important discussions about free expression and protection of journalistic activities, hopefully it gets other countries thinking about ways to fix their laws, rather than relying on outdated regulations.

Filed Under: free speech, iceland, investigative journalism, journalism, wikileaks
Companies: wikileaks

Iceland Wants To Become A Hub For Free Speech Journalism Protection

from the didn't-see-that-coming dept

Iceland got some bad press in the last year over its massive rise and devastating fall as a financial powerhouse, despite having such a tiny population. But now, the isolated island nation has decided that if it can't be the center of the financial world, it might as well become the hub for investigative journalism. It's set to announce "the strongest combination of source protection, freedom of speech, and libel-tourism prevention laws in the world." My first thought on hearing of this was that it sounded like the country wanted to become a haven for Wikileaks... and, indeed, the report at Nieman Lab says that Wikileaks was involved in drafting the new legislation. I think this is a great idea -- and the world needs places where free speech is much more seriously protected, but I do wonder how it will work in practice.

Filed Under: free speech, iceland, investigative journalism, journalism, wikileaks

Major Icelandic Newspaper Says Aggregators Not Allowed

from the fair-'nuff dept

We're still confused by some news publications' war against those who send them traffic. We've already covered some newspapers choosing technical means of blocking aggregators, which is effective cutting off your nose to spite your face, but what about just claiming that it's illegal? That seems to be the plan of a major Icelandic newspaper, who has put up a new policy that bans " repeated and systematic" linking to the website (Boing Boing's coverage implies it bans all deep linking, but that does not appear to be the case). This definitely seems targeted at aggregators, but I'm really not sure how that makes much of a difference anyway. First off, blocking links seems like a silly way to go about running a media publication, but second, just declaring that it's not allowed doesn't make much sense. If you really don't know how to capitalize on incoming traffic, then just use technical means. Insisting "it's not allowed" when your webserver says "yes, it's allowed!" doesn't make much sense.

Filed Under: deep linking, iceland, linking, newspaper

More Heavy Handed Actions By Microsoft Driving Companies To Open Source Software

from the piracy-is-the-least-of-their-problems dept

Some of the big proprietary software companies keep insisting that "piracy" is a big threat to their business (even if they quietly will admit that they actually benefit from piracy). After all, would a proprietary software company prefer that someone uses a competing product over using an unauthorized version of their software? In almost all cases, they'll prefer the unauthorized version, recognizing that it's much more likely to lead to future sales. So why do they keep taking actions that lead people to go to alternatives -- usually of the open source variety? The latest examples comes to us via Slashdot, which points out that in the spectacularly bankrupt country of Iceland, Microsoft has been pushing hard to get Microsoft resellers to pay up for licenses they sold to companies. The problem is that thousands of those underlying companies have gone bankrupt -- but Microsoft insists the resellers still need to pay. Their response has been to stop selling Microsoft products all together, and focus on open source alternatives instead. Perhaps it doesn't matter so much in a small, bankrupt country -- but these sorts of things have been happening elsewhere as well, and will quickly drive Microsoft customers right into the hands of competing products.

Filed Under: competition, iceland, piracy, software
Companies: microsoft