The Internet Governance Forum will start on Monday morning but already the debate has started – and it is surrounding freedom of speech online.
There are several reports that the Greek authorities arrested a man for linking – not writing, but linking – to blog posts that had satirised a businessman (possibly a TV evangelist). The businessman complained to the police and the police picked up the adminstrator of blog aggregation site blogme.gr – and charged him.
Update: The man arrested was Antonis Tsipropoulos and the target of the satire was Dimosthenis Liakopoulos – a controversial Greek tele-evangelist. The satire site that mocks Mr Liakopoulos can be found at funel.blogspot.com, but since it is hosted in the US, neither the Greek authorities nor even Mr Liakopoulos can get at it.
What Mr Tsipropoulos has been charged with, god only knows. But this is a spectactular own goal by the Greek authorites on the eve of the IGF. Particularly since making a crime of linking to someone else’s content is pure, and legally foolhardy, censorship.
It’s all over the Greek blogosphere, but I can’t understand the majority of it. Except for the fact that there appears to be movement building to protest outside the conference hotel as a statement against the arrest.
Yesterday, Amnesty International started a campaign to draw attention to those blogger across the world that have been imprisoned because of information they have posted online.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimosthenis_Liakopoulos
this is … Dimosthenis Liakopoulos
This is very important. If the facts are confirmed, there should be some mention of the case by civil society speakers at the IGF. Our high sounding words on freedom of expression would otherwise sound shallow…
The Greek libel law is clear.
If the webpage with the satire was tried (in absentia or otherwise) and if the blog aggregator was given a legal notice to remove the link, he had to do so.
If he does n’t comply then he can be arrested for contempt.
Without taking sides on the libel issue, this is the procedure required by law.
If it was, as they say, a case of house search and arrest after a mere complaint to the police by the victim of the alleged libel, then it is diabolical as well as illegal.
If there was a court order to remove the link then, whether we like it or not, then the blog aggregator acted foolishly.
I am not clear what exactly took place so perhaps someone who knows the facts can tell us more.
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