Internet Censorship Coming To A Computer Near EU
By Ann Huggett (11/27/03)
In his 1964 seminal work, Understanding Media, media analyst Marshall Mcluhan coined his famously cryptic line of "The Medium is the Message" whereby to the popular mind he sounded incredibly deep and totally shallow all at once.
However, his message of how media affects culture and society is even more relevant today given the dominance of the Web on mass communications, commerce, and the free and unregulated exchange of information world wide. The Web can literally be seen as the physical manifestation of Carl Jung's Collective Subconscious whereby if it's been thought, it has a Web page.
For the average, non-technical user the terms Web and Internet are exchangeable although the Web is a sub-division of the Internet. There are five divisions of the Internet: email, ftp (file transfer protocol), telnet, the Web, and I forget the last division but no, it's not spam, porno, or pop-ups. Unfortunately, international socialism, as evidenced by the unelected bureaucrats of the EU is using the pornography excuse along with race hate and religious intolerance to censor and control what's on the Internet.
Over in Euroland the Euro-socialists are seriously going about establishing a real censorship not seen since Hitler's Third Reich; perhaps it's not a coincidence that in the UK, among certain conservative circles, the EU is often referred to as the Fourth Reich. The EU just passed an amendment to their Convention on Cybercrime that outlaws any speech these thought crime specialists deem as "any written material, any image or any other representation of ideas or theories, which advocates, promotes or incites hatred, discrimination or violence, against any individual or group of individuals, based on race, colour, descent or national or ethnic origin, as well as religion if used as pretext for any of these factors." If passed into law by the various national legislatures which comprise the EU, online books, such as Oriana Fallaci's The Rage and Pride, which is an honest and impassioned examination of Islamic immigration into the West or even The Bible, which is examined and reproduced extensively on the Web, could be deemed "hate speech" by Muslims in France and homosexual activists in the UK respectively.
Any site which tries to honestly discuss and debate illegal immigration, the Iraqi War, cultural clashes, homosexuality, Israel's right to existance, or even conservatism itself can be declared a hate site. In the EU, as in any socialist society, politically correct speech shifts constantly as expediency, vengence, and fashion dictate. A year before this Convention on Cybercrime amendment was proposed, British server companies anticipated the coming censorship and started pressuring sites whose contents made them nervous. Web sites devoted to nostalgia, which carry the innocently charming children's books by Helen Bannerman or items about Golliwogs, felt the heat. Now, according to EU censors, even suspect or disapproved of links on a Web page devoid of what the Brussels bureacrats deem inflammatory can get the original site in trouble.
This is the same mind set that passed an anti-blasphemy law in regards to itself in 1999 making it a crime to criticize or mock the EU. (Blasphemy according to the EU is extreme if you even dare criticize its monetary policies.) Whether the speech and thought crime inspectors of the EU will apply the Cybercrime amendment to all sites equally is open to speculation. Non-white ethnic groups are deemed incapable of being bigoted among the politically correct even though that is a universal human emotion. Asian Indians, as well as ancient Greek artifacts, use a decorative symbol of Life often mistaken for a swastika and censoring this symbol because it is similar to the nazi symbol would cause diplomatic and educational nightmares. Any objection to illegal immigration is tagged "xenophobic" and perfectly decent people of good will have been called "racists" for daring to question non-European cultural practices. Historians and history buffs could face the charge of racism and nazism if they collect WWII memorabilia.
The EU also demanded that American sites follow suit even though our freedom of speech is protected by the First Amendment. That means if an EU Web site carries links to American sites, which carry information or images of which the EU censors do not approve, that EU site can be punished. According to the Committee of Ministers responsible for this amendment, "The emergence of international communication networks like the Internet provide certain persons with modern and powerful means to support racism and xenophobia and enables them to disseminate easily and widely expressions containing such ideas. In order to investigate and prosecute such persons, international cooperation is vital."
In 2000 French anti-racist groups demanded that Yahoo! remove Nazi memerobilia from its auction site because while the sales were aimed at American buyers from an American site, the objects themselves were still accessible to French Web surfers. An American judge, U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel, ruled that Yahoo! was an American site protected by the First Amendment and did not have to bow to European demands.
Yahoo! lawyer, Mary Catherine Worth's three year old comments are still valid today when she said, "This has very broad implications for everyone, not only companies but also for individuals who operate Web pages here in the United States. Today the judge basically said it was not consistent with the laws of the United States for another nation to regulate speech for a U.S. resident within the United States."
It's now three years later and that ruling still rankles the Europeans who are gearing up to block American sites much as China and Cuba do. According to Spanish Internet lawyer, Carlos Sánchez Almeida, "If European countries adopt the (anti-racism) amendment of the European Council in their legislatures, they'll also be able to block websites from the U.S.A., despite the First Amendment.
Spain has already passed its own laws which allow their censors to block American sites which they deem non-compliant with their national laws. While the First Amendment is jealously guarded in the US, it should be remembered that in these last three years liberal judicial activism from local courts all the way up to the US Supreme Court has infected recent decisions. Associate Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer is even on record saying that globalism is the driving force in his decisions in bringing American Constitutional law into line with foreign, ie. European laws. While it would not be easy to skirt the First Amendment, it could be done obliquely by putting the same pressure on server companies as experienced in the UK. As the Belgian lawyer for the Electronic Privacy and Information Center, Cedric Laurant, theorized, "This could lead to a clash of cultures. What will happen if the French police start asking local U.S. police to give them information about the people running a site?"
(Printer friendly version) Email: Ann Huggett
