They're taking away internet anonymity - Page 4 - OG Myth-Weavers

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They're taking away internet anonymity

   
Hear, hear! The law should have no grey areas left open for opportunists to POSSIBLY take advantage of. If there is any doubt about the law and any of its devices are left to "uncertain terms" then it has no business being a law.

Law should be absolute, requiring 100% proof.

This is another example of some organization making a broad, all-encompassing law and leaving it open to "interpret" as whoever is in charge sees fit. Such laws lead to tyrants.

That works fine on paper, but in reality we have to go with "beyond a reasonable doubt". Science doesn't allow us to prove anything with certainty, all we can do is repeatedly validate a hypothesis and doing that enough times is supposedly "proof" but that idea is pretty much arbitrary.

Quote:
Originally Posted by World of L_Tiene View Post
that enough times is supposedly "proof" but that idea is pretty much arbitrary.
That depends on what you mean by 'proof'. If by 'proof' you mean that it is, from then on, proven beyond any doubt or criticism, like a mathematical proof, then no. It's not proof.
If by 'proof' you mean that it's from then on considered true until further notice, then yes, it's supposed to be. But then I'm not sure how arbitrary it is.

Also, since we're getting technical, we can't actually validate a hypothesis. We can only invalidate the null hypothesis (which is that whatever you're trying to 'prove', whatever you take as the meaning of that word, is not true).




Now I'm curious on-topic, though. The Israeli court has no right to have people disclose my identity. I'm not an Israeli citizen. I've never even seen Israel, except maybe flying over it in a plane. Nor can they disclose that of anyone else outside of the country. How do they know, before establishing the identity of whoever made the comment, that they are someone whose identity they are allowed to ask for in the first place?

If you commit a crime against an Israeli citizen, yes they do have that right. Defamation is a crime almost everywhere, but it certainly is in Israel. They may have trouble getting you to appear in court but there is nothing to prevent them from exposing your identity. Obviously, they would have no standing if you defamed your next door neighbor (assuming of course that he isn't a citizen of Israel either) but if you start smearing someone who is, they most certainly can. The internet complicates things somewhat, but the legal concept is no different from their ability to try you if you traveled to Israel and murdered someone there.

This doesn't mean that an alien's government or a foreign corp must comply with Israel though. It just means Isreal has the right to put pressure on them to get the result.

Israel is pretty far down the 'sacrifice essential freedoms to get temporary safety' road. I seem to recall Ben Franklin had some strong words to say about that...

While I agree with what WhiteFire is saying in regards to the dangers of libel and defamation and the need to protect people from the malicious destruction of their character without basis in facts, I think this law can be a dangerous move and I'd very much like to know whom the exposed identities would be revealed to. When you're talking about a country that is involved in armed conflicts in a very dangerous part of the world, where ideas and words are as powerful as bullets in steering politics, the danger is that getting a court to reveal someone's identity may be all their opponent needs. Maybe they don't need to win a frivolous court case--maybe they only need to know what that person's name is, where they live, where their children sleep... And in the case of big companies or groups, they may not need to go to such extremes. Just bringing a case against someone will force that person to pay a lot of money and lose a lot of time for work, not to mention the effects of stress on their health. A lot of people would rather be quiet than have their lives turned upside down like that. The law could be used to cudgel free speech without ever letting the cases reach the courts.

I think that revealing online identities without first proving that libel or defamation has actually occurred could put the accused in very real danger. On the other hand, actual cases of libel/defamation should certainly be prosecuted, and how could one prove it one way or the other without first locating the libeler?

Here in the US of A, a person has a right to face their accuser. Do they also have a right not to, if they don't want to see them, or be known to them? And how about in Israel? And to the repeated statement that there will be restrictions and regulations, well... that's like saying we've got a screen door so we should be good in a rainstorm, eh? Lawyers will find ways to manipulate or avoid such things, and most of the time breaking a regulation in a bureaucracy will get you only a slap on the wrist, while the person you use it against could lose everything. Sure, several years of appeals and lawyer fees and misery later, you might get them to admit that they did something they shouldn't have. But by then you've spent a great deal of time and energy and money to get right back to where you started.

I'm not denying that libel and defamation are serious crimes that can cause a lot of damage. But I don't think this law is the right way to address them--I think it will cause a lot more problems than it solves.




 

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