The Fourth Place

I’m groaning again – being constructive is just so much work – but again its something highly emotive and in this case something very very important indeed.

A leaked “options analysis” is doing the rounds of UK blogs, I picked it up at Samizdata, where seconds poster Ed says:

Once again, the Government decide what the next authoritarian measure is and then try to find convincing arguments to back it up. That document is truly scary.

I couldn’t have put it better myself.

Read the document, and notice how it lays out options according to how popular they will be and how likely they are to encourage “rejection”. If enough people read this docuement, the country won’t be fooled, I hope we all reject the card with equal violence.

The document “Northern Rock Summary” has been removed from Scribd

This content was removed at the request of copyright agent J. Afia of Schillings o/b/o Northern Rock, plc

For more information, please send questions to support@scribd.com

I said I didn’t want to use this blog to moan, but having moaned once on the topic of censorship, libel and Schillings the above quote (source) demonstrating the chilling effect of copyright on free speech seems entirely justified.

Guido explains the importance of the document concerned in his post “Northen Rock Nationalised“.

Looks like I have been found to be talking nonsense about the Craig Murray censorship incident, however, I’ve been connected to the Law Commission report on Defamation and the Internet, which makes interesting reading.

 Under section 1(1) of the Defamation Act 1996, a secondary publisher is given a
defence if:
(b) he took reasonable care in relation to its publication; and
(c) he did not know, and had no reason to believe, that what he did caused or contributed to the publication of a defamatory statement.

…

we noted that the section 1 defence may cause problems, and that it raised issues that should be examined further. The defence is narrow. It applies only to those who are unaware that the publication contained
a statement with a defamatory meaning, in the sense that it would make reasonable people think worse of the claimant. There is no defence for secondary publishers who genuinely but mistakenly believe that the material is true, privileged or fair comment.

UPDATE: No they didn’t, it was an associate of Murray’s trying to keep the site up. See comments for full story.

Holy mother of God, the Fasthost’s censorship debacle worsens:

On my article about Alisher Usmanov which so incensed his lawyers Schillings, let me ask this question. Has anybody seen an argument posted or published from any credible source to argue that what I say about Usmanov is untrue?

I ask the question because one of the edits to this log my webhost made at Schillings’ behest was to say that my claim was “regarded as false by many people”. I have altered that edit, because there is no justification for such a claim. I have yet to see evidence of anybody, not one solitary person, arguing that I am wrong about Usmanov, other than his lawyers. Who are these “Many people”, and why are they peculiarly silent?

I am very sympathetic to my webhost having to change things for Schillings, but not to the extent of altering things to become defamatory of me!!!

Posted by craig on 3:14 PM 14/09/07 under Uzbekistan

Source

Winston Smith is alive and well and living in Gloucester. Utterly irresponsible.

Fasthosts, that bastion of the web hosting industry and pillar of the Gloucestershire community has pulled the plug on a web server hosting several important (and some less important) political blogs, including that of Boris Johnson. They say its because accusations made by Craig Murray and Tim Ireland at bloggerheads defamed a certain controvertial Russian, and mention a lawyers letter.

“In this case, we examined a website for potentially defamatory material and communicated to the customer that they had indeed breached the terms and conditions for Fasthosts Internet hosting.”

Would someone please pull the plug on this pathetic institution?

More on Fasthosts at the Register.

Links and quotes added 22/09/2007.