Cyber bullying proposals gone too far?

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Networkn
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#797651 11-Apr-2013 10:41

KiwiNZ:
freitasm:
networkn: So your argument is that because she has resources (for the sake of clarity let's call that money), to hire a lawyer to have this taken down? I believe your example is in the extreme and would be seen by the courts for what it would be.

I doubt courts will see that. Judges follow the letter of the law, not its intent. A good lawyer will put an argument to the judge that this person is "suffering" and will get the article taken down.

Do you really believe people are infallible?

The role of the Judge is to interpret the Law, hence precedents.

Exactly the point I was trying to make.

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#797666 11-Apr-2013 10:56

networkn:

There are very few people who wouldn't have to "pay" and those people are exempt for a lot of laws not just that one, so the argument against this particular law holds no more water than the others.

You've missed the point. It costs nothing to make a complaint and have speech you don't like removed. It costs a lot of money to argue that the speech should not be removed, and should be put back.

Under this law I could claim that your disagreement with me here on Geekzone was bullying and have it taken down, which costs me nothing. If you wanted it put back, you'd have to spend money to do it. You wouldn't bother, because it's not important enough to you. I win.

If it was important enough to you, you could argue it in court, and you might win. But it would cost you a lot of money to do so, and the richer I was, the more I would make it cost you.

Secondarily, even though you might win the right to have your speech reinstated, Geekzone might not bother to do so, because it costs Mauricio his time, but does not give him any benefit. He has to comply with an official takedown request. There is no requirement for him to put back anything that turns out not to have been necessary to take down. Having spent a lot of money and won your court battle you still lose, and I still win.

In this manner, the law actually empowers a certain kind of bully, whilst doing nothing to protect you from the other more common type of bully who can just as easily call you names in the school yard as send you nasty Facebook messages.

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networkn

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#797669 11-Apr-2013 11:03

SaltyNZ:
networkn:

There are very few people who wouldn't have to "pay" and those people are exempt for a lot of laws not just that one, so the argument against this particular law holds no more water than the others.

You've missed the point. It costs nothing to make a complaint and have speech you don't like removed. It costs a lot of money to argue that the speech should not be removed, and should be put back.

Under this law I could claim that your disagreement with me here on Geekzone was bullying and have it taken down, which costs me nothing. If you wanted it put back, you'd have to spend money to do it. You wouldn't bother, because it's not important enough to you. I win.

If it was important enough to you, you could argue it in court, and you might win. But it would cost you a lot of money to do so, and the richer I was, the more I would make it cost you.

Secondarily, even though you might win the right to have your speech reinstated, Geekzone might not bother to do so, because it costs Mauricio his time, but does not give him any benefit. He has to comply with an official takedown request. There is no requirement for him to put back anything that turns out not to have been necessary to take down. Having spent a lot of money and won your court battle you still lose, and I still win.

In this manner, the law actually empowers a certain kind of bully, whilst doing nothing to protect you from the other more common type of bully who can just as easily call you names in the school yard as send you nasty Facebook messages.

Hmm I'll concede you make some reasonable points here, but it certainly doesn't require the original complaint to be laid by someone with money so it could just as easily work in the reverse, where, I with no money make a number of complaints about someone wealthy which forces them to spend money to defend it, and it also seems to (indirectly) infer that only the poor get picked on or bullied which isn't the case.

I haven't read the entire proposal so I can't speak to the merits of what is required to lodge a takedown but I'd certainly expect some screening would occur and mediation would be a mandatory requirement prior to court action being allowed.

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#797677 11-Apr-2013 11:14

networkn:

Hmm I'll concede you make some reasonable points here, but it certainly doesn't require the original complaint to be laid by someone with money so it could just as easily work in the reverse, where, I with no money make a number of complaints about someone wealthy which forces them to spend money to defend it, and it also seems to (indirectly) infer that only the poor get picked on or bullied which isn't the case.

That's possible; I hadn't considered it.

I haven't read the entire proposal so I can't speak to the merits of what is required to lodge a takedown but I'd certainly expect some screening would occur and mediation would be a mandatory requirement prior to court action being allowed.

I haven't either, so it might not be as one-sided as I think it is. But if it's designed to make it easy for people to protect themselves from actual bullies, then it will necessarily be weighted in favour of simplicity to request takedowns compared to reinstatement.

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1080p

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#797965 11-Apr-2013 19:03

My issue with this idea is that we're turning something that should be handled between parents and/or schools into a criminal issue.

The ability to stop bullying via technology does exist. It is not perfect but blocking Facebook contacts, certain phone numbers, and filtering e-mail are all possible. Ignoring bullying is still the best solution.

I find it difficult to understand why taking your child's cell phone to the parent's of the bully and showing them the proof of bullying would not solve the issue. It used to be that 'proof' of bullying was tough to come across. Should it not be easier now to stop bullying?

Screeb

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#797988 11-Apr-2013 19:21

This law is complete and utter nonsense. As others have pointed out, it makes things illegal to say online that would be perfectly legal to say offline, and the criteria are incredibly subjective. It's anti-technology, alarmist, ineffective, and a great excuse to make more things illegal. Remember, when everything is illegal, whether or not you end up in jail depends solely on how much the people with the power like or dislike you or your opinions - congratulations, you now have a police state.

And what's with this? 3 months jail for posting "grossly offensive, indecent, obscene, menacing or knowingly false"? What the hell? This is the biggest attack on free speech in NZ I've ever seen. What does that even have to do with bullying? Why only online? So if a Kiwi posts, say, some run-of-the-mill pornography somewhere on the internet, which many people would consider "indecent", then that person will go to jail for 3 months? Or at best, be dragged into court? And "knowingly false" material? What? So now it's illegal to lie on the internet? Presumably this will be clarified to mean something about a particular person, but even then, can the blonde Jim now take you to court if you say "Jim has brown hair"? After all, Jim of course finds it very offensive to have ones' hair called brown.

Probably the most chilling effect of this law is that, as far as I've seen, there is no protection for jokes or parody - and there can't be, as it can be very subjective, especially when taken out of context - a context only known by the participants. Let's say you're joking with a friend, and you mock/hassle them, purely as a joke. They know it's a joke. All in good humour, etc. Anyone who's been on forums and social networks knows this happens all the time. Later, however, the relationship sours - that person can now get you thrown in jail by pointing to your jokes as "bullying".

The arguments for this law use the same logic that leads to "make essentially everything illegal and let the courts deal with it. If you did nothing 'wrong' then you have nothing to worry about". I hope I don't have to explain why that's bad.

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#797992 11-Apr-2013 19:24

1080p: My issue with this idea is that we're turning something that should be handled between parents and/or schools into a criminal issue.

The ability to stop bullying via technology does exist. It is not perfect but blocking Facebook contacts, certain phone numbers, and filtering e-mail are all possible. Ignoring bullying is still the best solution.

I find it difficult to understand why taking your child's cell phone to the parent's of the bully and showing them the proof of bullying would not solve the issue. It used to be that 'proof' of bullying was tough to come across. Should it not be easier now to stop bullying?

You know.... a lot of arguments are put forward that bullies are the way they are because they come from bad homes, usually with some form of abuse suffered by the bully.

I do not like your chances of anything positive happening by visiting the bully's household and presenting evidence of bullying...

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DonGould

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#798117 11-Apr-2013 21:57

freitasm: I saw DonG suggestion in the InternetNZ list to use the DIA filter or even *gasp* block entire servers by IP address.

That is so wrong...

You're quite right! I did suggest that the DIA filter could be used to address this bullying issue.

I got a very interesting range of on and off list responses to that suggestion.

My observation of the space is that as an industry we ended up with the likes of the DIA filter because we failed to work together to address the social issues that the filter attempts to address.

I hope we can do a better job this time with this issue and actually work as an industry to address the problems.

If we keep shouting 'we can't, we can't, we can't...' then someone is going to shout back "oh they did, they did, they did..." and we'll see the scope of the filter move.

Did you actually think you'd see a New Zealand with a DIA filter?

Seems we lost that battle.

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#798163 12-Apr-2013 00:16

There seems to be a lot of extreme reaction going on here - my FUDometer is working overtime. Read the gist of the proposal - first port of call is a new agency. The powers, or lack thereof, of this agency are not spelt out by the media - possibly because they haven't been thought through by the minister yet; I don't know I haven't tried to obtain a full copy of the proposal. Has anyone else?

Serious offences can go to the district court and a judge could order a take-down of the offending post/s. A criticism of something a politician says/does is not something knowingly false, it's also not a serious offence.

On the other hand, the KFC rumours surrounding Nate could be seen as bullying - be careful Mr Hughes...

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#798204 12-Apr-2013 08:32

Let's change the discussion a bit then... In the InternetNZ list DonG proposed either using the DIA filter (horror!) or blocking IP addresses if the DIA filter is not available for this.

Here is what happenes when a group of ISPs block an IP address because someone in the government has no clue how technology works: 1200 domains, including community education group Melbourne Free University have their sites offline in Australia because someone, for some undisclosed reason, ordered ISPs to block an IP address.

According to the EFF post "Australian networks censor community education site":

"The causes for the block are currently unknown. Speculation by the Australian networking community has included criminal investigations, action by ASIC, or DDOS mitigation. Unusually, a representative of one of the blackholing ISPs, AAPT, would only state that "in regard to this issue, this IP address has been blocked". Under conditions where the cause was to protect the functioning of the Internet, such as to combat a denial-of-service attack, one would expect the ISP to clearly describe the reasons for the temporary filter to better assist other network operators. It would be surprising if the cause was Australia's nascent Internet censorship system as that is reported to operate with DNS rather than IP blocks."

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#799832 15-Apr-2013 20:21

I read the briefing paper the media reports are based on:

http://media.nzherald.co.nz/webcontent/document/pdf/201314/Harmful%20Digital%20Communications%20-%20Cabinet%20pape1.pdf

It seems to me this is a clear attempt to bring in a no questions DCMA type system just as has caused so many issues for legitimate content creators and ordinary internet users in the United States.

The bullying issue should be tackled where the problem is. In schools. Anti-bullying programs are underfunded. There are some very good efforts operating but overall implementation and ongoing efforts are very uneven. It is nice this minister is just now proposing some kind of funding (for an anti-bullying program of the minister's choice) but this is clearly just a sweetener for a very bad deal.

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#800003 16-Apr-2013 08:47

I'd like to know what was in paragraph 62 that was so secret it needed to be redacted. Given the context, something about working agencies outside NZ in regards to enforcement, most likely.

Recommendations 26.2 and 26.3 look dangerously easy to abuse.

Would need to see the proposed bill before deciding whether or not it's a bridge too far. The mechanism for making a complaint and triggering takedown is important. This document suggests complaints will be initially looked at by an agency before a decision is made. However, it's also likely that agency will be a private entity contracted by the government. They therefore have an incentive to make their investigations as short & sweet as possible.

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#801867 18-Apr-2013 20:14

The whole thing about making ISPs responsible is kind of crazy - that can only lead to ISPs being required to implement a block list for sites and/or pages. There really is no need for this level of interference with the internet. So far Facebook, YouTube and the like have actively cooperated when asked.

DonGould

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#805390 25-Apr-2013 11:41

freitasm: Here is what happenes when a group of ISPs block an IP address because someone in the government has no clue how technology works: 1200 domains, including community education group Melbourne Free University have their sites offline in Australia because someone, for some undisclosed reason, ordered ISPs to block an IP address.

This strikes me as a reason for us to put more effort into education.

I attended an Internet New Zealand meeting on Tuesday where exactly these issues were discussed. The meeting was open to all members.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/digital-living/8573210/The-plot-to-block-internet-freedom

As for reasons not to put filters in play, the article I've linked above, makes far more sense to me than any of the technical arguments I keep seeing presented.

My biggest concern with technical arguments is that often they're wrong and this just creates ammo for folk wanting to push their infrastructure.

The article above doesn't talk to me as much about technical issues, but trust and global issues which the technology in these filtering systems actually can't provide assurances (to me anyway) of addressing acceptably.

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#805394 25-Apr-2013 11:52

gzt: The whole thing about making ISPs responsible is kind of crazy

I agree.

In my view, ISPs should only be a player in the issue and not responsible.

I also don't think they should be allowed to be 'not involved'. To me, that's like saying that a bar tender doesn't have to be involved in how much people drink when in a pub.

As with drinking, I don't think that bar tenders should be 100% responsible for peoples drinking, the whole community has to have a stake in that in my limited view.

gzt:
- that can only lead to ISPs being required to implement a block list for sites and/or pages. There really is no need for this level of interference with the internet. So far Facebook, YouTube and the like have actively cooperated when asked.

Your latter comment was a key driver for my raising the DIA filter question.

My personal preference at present is that everyone co-operates with each other to address the issues rather then ending at a point where government legislate in tools like the DIA filter.

My fear is that if we take this "oh I shouldn't have to be involved with this because..." attitude then we could see technology we don't like forced on us.

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