[Chapter-delegates] Law & Contents control / Ecuador

Wed Jul 27 07:41:48 PDT 2011

Carlos and Carlos,

right.

If something illegal is being carried on a truck in a highway it is the 
police, not the poor toll booth operator, who is to stop them.

Treat reasoning by analogy with care.

Back to the substantia point, Carlos Afonso has it right here - no private 
policing unless all parties have agreed upon it, it is within the law, 
there are appeal mechanisms and transparency and accountability in case of 
mistakes, anti-abuse preventions, etc.

It quickly grows so bad that it devolves to the state, and the 
intermediaries are exempt of obligations of proactive policing.

And you have to have a solid framework for anything else, including cease 
and desist or notice and takedown.

For the Ecuador case, it would be helpful to understand and discuss how 
specific and restrained, and how open to political interpretation, the new 
wording would be, plus how effective authorities are in upholding free 
speech. There is a broad spectrum against which to compare.

Yours,

Alejandro Pisanty

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      Dr. Alejandro Pisanty
UNAM, Av. Universidad 3000, 04510 Mexico DF Mexico

Tels. +52-(1)-55-5105-6044, +52-(1)-55-5418-3732

* Mi blog/My blog: http://pisanty.blogspot.com
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On Wed, 27 Jul 2011, Carlos A. Afonso wrote:

> Date: Wed, 27 Jul 2011 08:39:08 -0300
> From: Carlos A. Afonso <ca at cafonso.ca>
> To: cveraq at gmail.com
> Cc: Chapter Delegates <Chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org>
> Subject: Re: [Chapter-delegates] Law & Contents control / Ecuador
> 
> Yes, I do agree, provided that whoever enforces the law in the highway
> on both sides of the border is not the operator, but the proper law
> enforcement authorities, right?
>
> []s fraternos
>
> --c.a.
>
> On 07/27/2011 08:24 AM, cveraq at gmail.com wrote:
>> +1
>>
>> The thing is that when warned about something illegal and not taking action then the ISP or host must be also responsible
>>
>> Using the highway example an authority in one side of frontier can not say they are not responsible of drug traffic transported in vehicles using the highway in their side of frontier because they only provide the infrastructure. If the people of the other side of frontier warns that the highway is used for drug traffic and prove it, the legal actions and measures to prevent the transportation must be in place.. And if this is continuous, there is always the option to close the frontier for those coming from the other side of frontier because people responsible in that side does not take action to prevent drug traffic
>>
>> Do we agree?
>>
>> Carlos
>> Mensaje enviado desde mi terminal BlackBerry® de Claro
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: "Carlos A. Afonso" <ca at cafonso.ca>
>> Date: Wed, 27 Jul 2011 07:38:16
>> To: <cveraq at gmail.com>
>> Cc: Freddy Linares Torres<freddylinares at gmail.com>; Chapter Delegates<Chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org>
>> Subject: Re: [Chapter-delegates] Law & Contents control / Ecuador
>>
>> Carissimi,
>>
>> Preemptive disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. :)
>>
>> About a "regulatory function" of content providers, my vision is that if
>> they are providers of their *own* content of course they should be
>> responsible for it -- according to a basic principle that any content is
>> the responsibility of whoever *produces* it in the first place.
>>
>> If a content provider hires someone to produce content for the provider
>> to publish (say, Terra, UOL, CNN etc) the provider may or may not be
>> responsible for it, depending on the terms of the contract (in which
>> case the disclaimer should always accompany the content).
>>
>> A serious risk emerges when lawmakers confuse production of content with
>> whoever opens up an Internet space for this content to be disseminated
>> and automatically assign legal responsibility to the provider. So a
>> provider (say, a blog host) is not preemptively responsible for the
>> content posted by a blogger. In general there is a "loose contract" in
>> the form of a "terms of service" which the blogger agrees to before
>> starting to post (and I have never seen a list of "forbidden words" in
>> these terms of service).
>>
>> So under no circumstance (in a democratic society) a host of content
>> services should be required to exert law enforcement power over users of
>> its service -- in the same way a highway operator is not responsible for
>> the content of vehicles going through it -- unless it has taken legal
>> responsibility over the content in question for itself beforehand. It
>> certainly should provide all information to law enforcers when required
>> by a due process of law and abide by legal decisions resulting from this
>> due process.
>>
>> To base content censorship on a collection of words is a form of
>> policing which in many cases will censor the "wrong" thing. An ebook or
>> film publisher for instance would not allow in its stock American films
>> or romances with the word "fuck"? (Incidentally, would it be acceptable
>> that the host of this list censors this message?)
>>
>> Lawmakers have a function, lawy enforcers have a function, content
>> providers have a function etc etc -- all these based on a constitution
>> of principles built by social consensus. This is how democratic
>> societies are organized. Imperfectly so, yes, but nevertheless still the
>> best alternative.
>>
>> Of course in every situation there are the obvious extremes -- any
>> content provider not linked to the business of pedophilia would
>> obviously take immediate action if it identifies its presence in the
>> space under its purview etc.
>>
>> IMHO
>>
>> --c.a.
>>
>> On 07/27/2011 12:52 AM, Carlos Vera wrote:
>>> Freddy and all: Now in Ecuador, the parliament is discussing a new
>>> communication law. It´s said for some sectors that the proposed text is
>>> trying to control free speech in any technological platform. In my opinion
>>> this is not exact.
>>>
>>> Most main content providers has policies or self regulation or laws that
>>> work for them in issues such as the publication of some content that
>>> infringe laws or Intellectual property or have some words not permitted..
>>> they use to ban this kind of content using filters for such words or putting
>>> down some content (videos, pictures, words, etc) after some claim. For
>>> example we can have youtube not showing some videos in certain countries...
>>> or yahoo banning some words (like verga in spanish or fuck for example)
>>> automatically or manually under some advice or report. The same with
>>> facebook for example or google..
>>>
>>> So this kind of regulations works in this way.. and it is necessary to have
>>> some way to law enforce the right of users or authorities so content
>>> providers  and infrastructure providers have the way to follow the law under
>>> certain circumstances.. so you have the way to control not maybe what people
>>> publish but what you maintain published after a warning..
>>>
>>> No matter what, this is a political discussion with some people in one side
>>> and other people in the other so we need to understand how this works and
>>> that this exists already in most legislation all around the world.
>>>
>>> Carlos
>>>
>>> El 26 de julio de 2011 19:54, Freddy Linares Torres <freddylinares at gmail.com
>>>> escribió:
>>>
>>>> Perhaps Carlos could give us more information.
>>>>
>>>> http://www.radiosucre.com.ec/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=16203:ley-de-medios-incluye-control-de-contenido-que-se-publica-en-internet&catid=1:politica&Itemid=24
>>>>
>>>> Saludos,
>>>>
>>>> -------
>>>> Freddy Linares Torres
>>>> ISOC Perú
>>>> Tel. + 51 1 997378646 | twitter: @freddylinares | www.freddylinares.com
>>>>
>>>> * Vía Digital http://blogs.gestion.pe/viadigital/
>>>>
>>>>
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>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
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