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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Johannes Pilch who wrote (156324)	6/28/2001 2:19:08 PM
From: goldworldnet	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Proposed Treaty Threatens Internet Wes Vernon Wednesday, June 27, 2001 WASHINGTON - A new proposal coming out of an international conference threatens the freedom you enjoy through "the people’s medium,” the Internet. James Love, writing in News Viewz, reports that the just-concluded conference at the Hague in the Netherlands would impose "a bold set of rules that will profoundly change the internet” and "extend the reach of every country’s intellectual property laws,” including those that are not related to the Internet. Last December, NewsMax.com reported on efforts within the U.S. government to make Web sites responsible for everything said by the other sites to which they provide links. In other words, if a nonprofit Web site provides links to a partisan political site, the nonprofit would lose its tax-exempt status because that would count as a campaign contribution. This is widely feared to be a leftist reaction to the Internet’s ability to get around the mainstream media and expose the public to the other side of issues. That would apply even to those sites that provide links to both the Republican and Democrat parties. It would put a lot of sites out of business or constrain their ability to reference other sources. A similar concept envisioned on an international scale by the Hague convention could "effectively strip Internet service providers of protection from litigation over the content they carry.” As Love puts it, the new international treaty, if it takes effect, "will strangle the Internet with a suffocating blanket of overlapping jurisdictional claims, expose every web page publisher to liabilities for libel, defamation and every other speech offense from virtually any country." Membership in the Hague Conference now includes China and Egypt. One can hardly imagine an American Web site relishing being held to the "speech standards” prevailing in places where repressive civil actions that crush dissent are commonplace. But the European delegates would not even consider adding favorable speech language. In answer to an inquiry from NewsMax.com, Love said that "every country can refuse to enforce a judgment if a judge finds that to do so would be manifestly incompatible with public policy, a fairly high standard, but not impossibly high.” Those who have observed the antics of some of the more activist judges in this country can imagine some significant lines being crossed and precedents being set. Love also told NewsMax that under the Hague convention, "nations agree to enforce each other’s judgments, if they follow a common set of rules regarding jurisdiction. In terms of the Internet and speech, just about everyone gets jurisdiction, which causes all sorts of problems.” One of those "problems” is that the treaty would give "businesses who sell goods and services the right to dictate via contracts countries where disputes will be resolved and rights defended.” What caused all this activity to muzzle the Internet? Get this: "European negotiators were also unhappy with the generally free and unruly nature of the Internet, and saw the convention as a mechanism to reign in hate speech.” To some, that raises a red flag and sounds eerily similar to frequent leftist rhetoric in the United States. Who defines "hate speech”? Is it defined by the prevailing ultra-left tone on many of America’s campuses where professors lose their positions and students are suspended or refused graduation for speaking against politically correct orthodoxy? The News Viewz paper adds: "Europe was also alarmed and jealous of the U.S. leadership in the development of the Internet. European negotiators pushed hard to impose a treaty based on the European Union’s Brussels Convention, not only to preserve the European approach, but to lead, for once, in an important area for the Internet.” Presumably, there will come a time when the president will be asked to submit this treaty to the U.S. Senate for ratification. Look for another controversy over yet another document which, according to the report cited above, would "diminish national sovereignty.” newsmax.com * * *