Anarchism, legality, religion and stoopid USians

[matgb]

• Sheldon: The Daily Comic Strip by Dave Kellett
  Washington DC: Built by morons... (but then, London's not that much better)
  (tags: rome greece architecture)
• Web 2.0 and User-Generated Content: legal challenges in the new frontier
  This is rather good (if a bit weighty), legal responsibity of online content, who's gets sued for libel, etc and what your web host should be aware of. Seems to back up my view that screening comments can cause issues
  (tags: law libel)
• el_staplador: She called herself a 'Christian'
  Kathleen on how many Christian campaigners are distinctly unChristian and her own particular brand of liberal theology
  (tags: religion extremism christianity)
• Jonny's Blog - Rules And Rights: Can You Have One Without The Other?
  If anyone has any examples of how an anarchic society might work, then I'd be interested in reading them. But for now, count me out.
  (tags: anarchism vegetarianism theory philosophy)

Comments

[andrewducker]

The last one is typical of my feelings on these things. Whenever I see them they're screeds of "X Sucks!" - but with nothing concrete in the way of alternative proposals.

[matgb]

Aye. It'd take very little effort at all to read someone like Nozick or Proudhon, or even Chomsky, and apply the analysis, but instead you just have vagueness. At least the Spanish anarchists had some ideas, even if they didn't really work well.

[drjon.livejournal.com]

What's your take on screening comments?

[matgb]

Under UK libel law you lose any real defense if you pre-screen, it's somewhat equivalent to the US 'common carrier' stuff, if you only publish select comments then you've approved them.

If everything is published and you delete on complaint then you have a defense that's held up, but even then it can cause problems:

More interestingly the very fact that I have shown good will to the head of the company by making a vast amount of deletions and edits shows that I have changed from a "common carrier" of information to a "publisher", and this increases my legal liability for the comments.

Essentially, IANAL, but I have friends who are (and my fiancée sat next to me has a postgrad law degree) and no one fully knows. We need some case law or an Act to get started. As it happens, there's an interesting possibility brewing, a member of the BNP has started a blog on the free platform of the Telegraph website, with potentially legally interesting remarks being made.

As things stand, I advise any politician that asks to either moderate post publication or not have comments, and ensure everyone has some sort of account for traceability. Pre screening is possibly the worst option.

But I'm not sure, and its UK law, I know AUS is different in some respects but I've not looked at any details at all.

[drjon.livejournal.com]

o__O

Damn good point. Damn.

I screen comments to prevent Spam and Extreme Trolls (I get a lot of both, on occasion). But mostly I unscreen people's comments otherwise, and I don't necessarily agree with the comments I unscreen.

Maybe I should put a disclaimer on my blog...