The devil is in the press release

InternetNZ Chief Executive Vikram Kumar has blogged this afternoon with his thoughts on the recently-announced Review of New Media

See http://www.internetnz.net.nz/news/blog/2010/devil-press-release

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The devil is in the press release

15 Oct 2010

The devil may not be in the details but a press release. In this case, Minister Simon Power ordering a review of “new media” by the Law Commission, it is even more so given that he used the same words in response to Parliamentary questions.

The review is a good step. Asking the Law Commission to lead it is also good. They have both the credibility and skills do a thorough job and develop balanced perspectives. And first talking about the issues and defining real problems before looking at possible solutions is good.

But there are many issues with the way the Minister has chosen to describe the review. They reveal assumptions and perspectives that are worrying and, in some cases, plain wrong.

Take the example of “It’s a bit of a Wild West out there in cyberspace at the moment...” If the intention was a bit of dramatic flourish then it’s no big deal. However, if that’s what the Minister really believes and is a starting assumption of the review, then we’ve got reasons to be very, very worried.

Leaving aside the rather quaint way of talking about “cyberspace” as “out there”, the Internet is not a Wild West. One recent example will suffice. Blogger Cameron Slater, better known as Whale Oil, has been ordered by a court to pay up $8,000 in fines and costs for breaching name suppression orders online. Using existing laws and procedures to deliver justice in the case of a blogger hardly sounds like Wild West to me.

A second thorn is scope. The review is formally scoped to look at “news media” while the Minister in his press release talks about “bloggers”, “online publishers” and “new media”. The intention may be to target influential and prolific bloggers but the problem is that he is also talking about you and me. Social media has made the Internet a way for all of us to be bloggers, online publishers, and new media.

Like many other people, I get my news from diverse sources, a mix of “old media” and “new media” using “old ways” and “new ways”. I can be alerted to a breaking news story on Twitter and then check out multiple sources for the story, pictures, videos, comments, analysis, other relevant links, etc. Often I’ll read about it in the newspaper later or hear about it on the radio. The point is that the focus should be on ensuring the law is followed irrespective of the medium.

That brings me to the press release’s notable lack of appreciating some of the challenges the Internet poses. It is global in nature and that straight away implies jurisdictional issues. Also, once published online, it is hard or impossible to remove content from the Internet, even if the original source is removed. For example, it’s impossible to erase a tweet about a person if that person subsequently gets name suppression.

The other notable absence was any reference whatsoever to freedom of speech. The Internet has contributed more to freedom of speech than perhaps any other medium before it. We cherish this freedom and it must act as an effective counterweight to a call for restrictions that end up undermining our democratic foundations.

This isn’t a theoretical or remote possibility. The example of Jordan is useful, both to celebrate the final outcome but also to note the rocky road that the country had to travel to get there.

The Hashemite Arab Kingdom of Jordan originally enacted a law, the Information Systems Crime Law, a few months back. Somewhat similar to New Zealand, it was “introduced to address a legal vacuum and keep pace with ongoing developments in information technology”. The original law punished any Jordanian who sent any message via the Internet that contained “defamation, contempt or slander”.

There was a huge public reaction that lasted ten days on many of the issues that we will now debate in New Zealand, including definitions, freedom of speech, and practicalities of regulating a global network using national laws.

The result was that the Jordanian government amended the law, focusing it more tightly on the issues of government security and expressly supporting Internet free speech.

So, while a review kicked off by the Minister and the resulting public debate is a good thing, there are a number of areas that we need to be cautious and pragmatic.

Given that this blog post was about a recent event, I’d probably qualify as a blogger using new media. Like others, at a personal and societal level I’m keen that restrictions imposed on me are balanced. As Judge David Harvey said in the Whale Oil case, the Internet has allowed everyone to become a publisher but with that comes an obligation to be accountable.

The question is how that accountability is enforced in the future. It already is, the Internet is not a Wild West. Any new restrictions need to come with net benefits to New Zealand. Heavy handed regulation suitable for “old media’s” centralised, one-way broadcasting model is challenged by a distributed, global, two-way medium.

Just because it starts with “cyber” doesn’t mean we need to be fearful of what’s “out there”.

ENDS

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