Zone-H.org - Unrestricted Information - New York Times restricted for the Brits

New York Times restricted for the Brits

Thursday, 31 August 2006

Real censorship doesn’t exist only in far dictatorships, it is indeed a subtle danger we can easily came across also in our western and developed countries, and Zone-H will never stop saying that we must pay attention.

A “little” example, comes from the heart of civilized world, and specifically from the anglo-american world. It happened that the New York Times website, using geo-targeting, has blocked UK visitors from accessing a news article about evidences being assembled during the investigation on the UK airlines terror plot.

The article contained direct quotes from the "martyrdom videos" of the accused, and technical details of the surveillance operation the British authorities had conducted.

As reported by MSBC the Times spokeswoman Diane McNulty declared on Tuesday that they "had clear legal advice that publication in the U.K. might run afoul of their law. It's a country that doesn't have the First Amendment, but it does have the free press. We felt we should respect their country's law."

Visitors from British IP addresses who click on a link to the article, published Monday, got the following message:

As most of us know, proxy servers and applications such as Tor could turn out to be really useful to move around this kind of obstacles, and the censored article can be posted on blogs or other online sources from elsewhere in the world.
The matter here isn’t about “how to get this info” but about “why” English users are prevented to reach it.

Actually the principle that stands behind this law could be fair: no potentially influencing information about the defendants should be disclosed before the process.. but the law isn’t up-to-dated enough to work properly, because as we explained in the above paragraph, it is really easy to move around.So what?

Law is Law, and it has to be respected but this specific law sounds anachronistic and strange now, in Europe, in the age of the Internet.

Maybe it is just because we are so used to free information that we cannot accept any limitation when we try to get it.
Should we change our mind, or should we not?

Comments Index (Total Messages: 3)

sigh Written by Guest on 2006-09-05 16:19:01

Re: sigh Written by Guest on 2006-09-17 18:41:38

typo Written by Guest on 2006-09-05 18:21:44

Powered by a Zone-H(ified) version of AkoComment 3.0!

DISCLAIMER: Forum postings are the opinion of the posting author alone, and should not be taken as the opinion of Zone-h. The author is entirely and solely responsible for all content that he/she uploads, posts, or otherwise transmits via the website. Zone-h is not responsible for such content. However, Zone-h shall have the right, but not the obligation, to delete, move, or edit any content that violates this agreement or is otherwise objectionable as determined by Zone-h in its sole discretion and without notice.

< Prev		Next >

[ Back ]