Quote:
Originally Posted by Breha
Such principles are good only when running a jail to terrorize unruly inmates. They are instead criminal per se when running a state: penal responsability is personal according to the most basic principle of penal law in any barely decent country. How many forums will cease working or will see their activity stifled for fear of a reprisal? Do the lawmakers have any knowledge of how an internet forum works? Because, if they have it, we must conclude that he purpose of this rule is to stifle any internet dissenting voice.
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More than right. Unfortunately the problem rests in the fact that legislators (or rather the Courts) are considering an Administrator as equal to a newspaper Editor or as someone having a related role. This neglects the nature of an internet forum itself and the impossibility of a decent and constant disciplinary action which would inevitably minimise forum activity in the first place.
I always asserted that rather than a form of communications media, even though it is, the nature of an internet forum is like a bar. Given the nature of discussions in bars one wouldn't pretend that participants in such discussions are equalled to contributors in some newspaper who would eventually be controlled by the editor prior to and not after actual publication. I perfectly know that what is said in bars if often prosecutable, but if that was the case we would have a ridiculous state, and that same state is being transposed for electronic forums. I do believe however that the major problem is lack of self-discipline in the participants of conversations.
Publication, is the moment where incrimination would be considered, at least from how I understood our laws. Vetting each and every post in an electronic forum as though it was a newspaper that will be issued at a later moment is practically impossible or at least impractible.
Unfortunately, this a typical case when the velocity of socio-technological progress is not paralleled by legal adaptation to it. I believe that this is moreso the case, rather than an attempt to silence political opponents. If the latter actually happens, it is because legislators find the lack of adaptation convenient for their political agendas. So it is a case of certain agendas gaining profit from the situation, rather than the situation being created by the same agendas.