Forums jurisdiction

[Calcoran]

Today seems to be a "no-forums" (bbs) day in France. The second one to date.
This is all to protest against recent rulings in France where Webmasters, Forum owners, and Internet Access Providers have been sued for slander and found guilty. Not because <I>they</I> actually wrote anything, but because someone wrote something on <I>their</I> boards!

So, for instance, if Don lived in France, and if I came and said something offensive on his boards, he could get a 200 000 euros fine for that. I'm not kidding, 200 000 euros! Well, that way they're pretty sure to kill any forum activity in France .

Anyhow ... I was wondering what the law in your countries had to say about it? Could something like that happen where you live? Just curious.

[qerlin]

That's nuts. Doesn't happen here...yet. But when the dishits we elected can abnegate out political speech rights with the Incumbent Protection Act...oop! I mean Campaign Finance Reform...I wouldn't put it past them to try.

This is an issue the French should riot about, not the biannual (it seems) row over farm subsidies.

[Capt Daniel Hunter]

That's plain moronic.

[C5]

Originally posted by qerlin
This is an issue the French should riot about, not the biannual (it seems) row over farm subsidies.

Sadly this concerns mainly people who use the Net, and that doesn't make a lot of people in France (nor are they the sort of people who like to demonstrate - beside, farmers can always use their machines and drop some vegetables during demonstrations, but what will netsurfers do ? Wave our mices or modems in the air ? )

BTW, I was unaware of this event . Could you please point me to some of your sources, Calcoran ?

[Eric R.]

I think Jay and Silent Bob knew better how to handle this situation pretty good . But its crazy, let me get this right, a French court is actually making a French citizen pay for essentually acting snoty?

[Cybrludite]

Originally posted by Eric R.
I think Jay and Silent Bob knew better how to handle this situation pretty good . But its crazy, let me get this right, a French court is actually making a French citizen pay for essentually acting snoty?

Sort of. They're fining French sysops for anyone being snotty on their BBSs. Still, it could be worse. Illuminatti Online was shut down by the Secret Service because SJ Games was hosting the playtest of their Cyberpunk suppliment on it. (Ok, granted, the fact that it was Loyd Blankenship writing the thing might have had something to do with them thinking it was some sort of hacking manual...) The SS ended up loosing the lawsuit filed against them by SJG and the EFF was founded as a result of the case.

[REG]

Lucky we live in America.

Then again, with threats of future terrorist attack ... Big Brothers are stepping up their snooping operations. In fact, I had to cover up my PC and every electonic appliances in my room before I put on clothes.

[Dan Gurden]

I am afraid that the loss of comunications freedom is a price that is going to be paid.

This doesn't mean that you cannot say what you like, just be aware that someone, somewhere is reading it too. We are likely to get internet activity monitoring later this year in the UK, with the ISP's tracking their users usage...

This concerns me, not because of the internet Porn , but because as a Roleplayer, I regularly surf some odd sites, and occasoinally find some unpleasant ones while researching... That and as the son of a senior opposition polititian, we already know that as a family we are on a file somewhere... (From the Lib Dems, not Conservative or Labour, for you UK guys)

That and in the course of RPG conversations, and plot sharing several key-words often arise that I am sure would have sysops listening in, especially when dealing with the Cyberpunk genre... As Cyberludite said, the Secret service has a hsitory of not being able to tell the difference...

BTW Cyber, was this a SECOND raid on the same product or the raid that had the sourcebook confiscated for a while back in the early 90's? Did the Secret Service make the same mistake twice? I want to know, to see how dumb the guys protecting the president REALLY are.

(See, several key words, used in jest, and in context that would probably be flagged for monitoring)

[Calcoran]

C5: Try http://www.odebi.org/ ... as a matter of fact I didn't know about it either, I only learnt about it when I tried to go to a French forum where I like to lurk and got redirected to a page saying "0 forum day yadda yadda ...".

[Cybrludite]

Just the original raid. One was more than enough for SJ Games. I'm still convinced that the economic effects of the raid was the reason for the spate of crappy bindings from SJG in the mid '90s. Of course, my books see much more use than most, so it could be my own fault for them coming apart. Still, I never had that problem with my pre-raid books.