On September 7 Lithuanian Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius and the ministers have put their first electronic signatures to the legal acts passed by the Government. Thus Lithuania has made an important step in e-solutions development and has joined the leading European states, reported BC Press Office of Lithuanian Government.
“I am delighted that Lithuania continues to strengthen its positions as a modern and dynamic state. With the introduction of the electronic signature system and electronic documents, the Government has become an excellent example to the other public and private sector organisations”, said Prime Minister during the signing ceremony.
The electronic signature system will allow the Government, while drawing and passing its legal acts, to abandon paper copies, and to save the working time of ministry clerks, for in future no time will be wasted for carrying passed legal acts from one institution to another for a signature thereto. The Cabinet will be able to electronically sign the legal acts submitted thereto at any convenient time and in any place. The Government will also use the electronic signature information system ELPAS for the submission of draft Presidential decrees as well as draft laws to the Seimas.
With the introduction of the Government electronic signature information system, Lithuania has joined the ranks of the leading EU member states in this respect. Governments of the neighbouring states Latvia and Poland have not yet started using electronic signature in their work.
It is expected that the step made by the Lithuanian Government will encourage the spread of electronic documents both in the public and private sectors. The electronic signature system ELPAS has been gratuitously designed by the UAB Mitsoft in cooperation with the Office of the Prime Minister. Ministry of the Interior has organized production of special applications for the electronic signature, as well as tuning of the Cabinet public servant cards to the system.
According to the European Commission data of 2010, in general Lithuania has achieved more than 84 % of the maturity level of the Internet public service accessibility. Recently the number of the on-line public services has grown by 100 % in Lithuania: services related to income taxes, student allowances, issue of construction permits, public library services, enrolment to higher education establishments, social benefits, customs declarations, public procurement, and other fields, can be fully accessed on-line.
The law of Defamation has come under renewed scrutiny with the advent of the Internet. This is largely because it is the nature of the Internet to give the average, anonymous person an opportunity to express their opinion well-beyond any previously defined venue. To better understand Internet Defamation, these questions will be answered: What is Defamation?; Is Internet Defamation Defined as Slander, Libel or Both?; Can a Blog Be Sued for Defamation; Isn't It All Free Speech?;
The law of Defamation has come under renewed scrutiny with the advent of the Internet. This is largely because it is the nature of the Internet to give the average, anonymous person an opportunity to express their opinion well-beyond any previously defined venue. Consider the fact that a person of modest means now has the ability to publish a statement, article, or news item across the world in an instant, without an editor checking the facts. Thereafter, the item will linger on the 'Net for months, or even years, impossible to recover and amend, if the "facts" are erroneous. Therefore, it is inevitable that problems are going to arise.
The main issue to remember when dealing with the Internet is that people still have their basic legal rights intact on the Net, and – likewise – the Internet is not as completely anonymous as the typical person may presume.
What is Defamation?
The law of defamation has been defined in the West for centuries, and the Internet variety holds to that same basic outline with a few twists. Defamation is the act of making an untrue statement to a third party that damages the subject's reputation. There are several subcategories of Defamation, being Libel and Slander. Libel is Defaming in a printed forum, such as a newspaper or magazine. Slander is spoken Defamation, and could be made person-to-person, or also broadcast over a radio or television.
Technically, Defamation actionable at law follows this schema:
1. A false and defamatory statement regarding another;
2. Unprivileged publication of the claim to a third party;
3. Rising, in the case of matters of public concern, to at least negligence by the publisher, or worse; and
4. Damages to the subject.
Generally, persons defined as "Public Figures," have a higher threshold in proving someone committed Defamation against them; that is, the statement must have been made maliciously. There are also four subjects that if falsely dispersed as a fact about another person, are actionable on their face: Attacking a person's professional character /standing; Alleging an unmarried person is unchaste; Claims a person is infected with a sexually transmitted, or loathesome disease; Claims a person has committed a crime of moral turpitude.
Is Internet Defamation Defined as Slander, Libel or Both?
Until the recent development of "podcasts," and other types of online videos, such as those featured on YouTube, Defamation on the Internet was largely deigned Libel. But whether an online case of accused Defamation should fall under either category of Libel or Slander will not be nearly as meaningful as whether the activity satisfies the basic Defamation criteria, as defined above. What is most important is to focus upon the actual statement, whether verbal or written, that a plaintiff claims is defamatory.
A recently filed case illustrates the application of a libel claim in a blogging case in NY, Stuart Pivar v. Seed Media, 2007cv07334, Filed August 16, 2007, in New York Southern District Court. Seed Media pays PZ Myers to blog at ScienceBlogs.com, and there he reviewed a book by Dr. Stuart Pivar, called "LifeCode: The Theory of Biological Self Organization" which purports to reconfigure Darwinian Evolution.
Myers claimed Pivar is a "classic crackpot" on his http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula website. In response, the lawsuit complaint states, "Myer's defamatory remarks were made with actual malice; Myers called Plaintiff "a classic crackpot" fully knowing that statement to be false as a statement of fact and in reckless disregard of the truth about Plaintiff because Myer's knew full well, the time of publishing his defamatory statement that no scientist holding the international reputation of any of Hazen, Sasselov, Goodwin or Tyson would endorse or review the work of a crackpot."
The complaint claims Myers caused "considerable mental and emotional distress," tortious interference with the plaintiff's business relationships as a "scientist and scientific editor," and "loss of book sales and diminished returns on ten years of funded scientific research in special damages" exceeding $5 million.
The suits asks for: declaratory relief to remove defamatory statements from the web and an injunction to block further libel; $5 million in special damages for "tortious interference with business relations"; and $10 million in damages for defamation, emotional distress, and loss of reputation.
This lawsuit well illustrates the libelous cause, effect and damages of a proper tort case based upon defamation.
Can a Blog Be Sued for Defamation; Isn’t It All Free Speech?
This is a knotty issue, but a short answer would be, generally, that a blog owner whose blog has published obnoxious materials can be held harmless while a blogger using the site can be liable. The Communications Decency Act of 1996, is a protector of blog owners. It states, in section 230, that it "precludes courts from entertaining claims that would place a computer service provider in a publisher's role." As to how the court sees blogs, in general, overall, the US Supreme Court has ruled that blogs are similar to news groups, saying "in the context of defamation law, the rights of the institutional media are no greater and no less than those enjoyed by other individuals and organizations engaged in the same activities."
For bloggers, all Defamation legal rules apply to their posts. But there are many complications in applying them. First, many people who post online comments, and probably those tending to make the most inflammatory and false statements, will do so anonymously, for obvious reasons. So the first threshold is identifying the blogger making Defamatory claims. Several things make this difficult, as well. Since the blogger probably will not identify themselves when the issue comes to light, there needs to be a legal process that allows identification. They can be traced by high-tech means, but a court must agree via summary judgment that all the elements of Defamation have been met. This technology does have some limits, as it can be stymied through use of "Proxies," which mask the true origin of the blogger. Also, the website owner may not cooperate in the search.
A recent case showed how powerful Defamation laws, applied online, can be. In November 2006, a Florida woman, Sue Scheff, was awarded $11.3 million in damages in Broward County Circuit Court, in one of the biggest awards ever tolled. The suit was filed for Internet defamation, and the jury found a Louisiana woman had posted caustic messages against the Scheff and her company, claiming she was a "con artist" and "fraud". The jury found the charges were completely false, so the Louisiana woman had no defense. Interestingly, Scheff's attorney had offered to settle the case for $35,000 before it went before the jury.
The Czech Constitutional Court declared national data retention legislation unconstitutional on 31 March 2011. This is part of the Electronic Communications Act and its implementing legislation according to which records of e-mails, phone calls, and SMS as well as websites accesses of every citizen should be retained by telecommunications companies for a time period of six months, as an implementation of the Data Retention Directive. This court decision followed previous decisions of the constitutional courts of Germany and Romania.
The complaint filed with the Constitutional Court was prepared by activists from EDRi-member Czech civic rights organisation Iuridicum Remedium and 51 MPs from the Civic Democratic Party (ODS) and the Green Party (SZ) who signed it in March 2010.
The Constitutional Court decision criticizes the Czech transposition of the Data Retention Directive. The Czech legislation requires the retaining of a larger number of data than the directive demands, where the use of data is not limited to investigating terrorism and serious organised crime. There was a lack of the principle of subsidiarity in the legislation related to eavesdropping, although these data are equally sensitive. This has led to a large number of requests for such data by the police. The national legislation lacked, according to the constitutional court, clear and detailed rules for the protection of personal data as well as the obligation to inform the person whose data has been requested.
The court said that EU law was not part of the constitution of the Czech Republic and that the directive could therefore not be reviewed by the Constitutional Court. According to the court decision, the content of the Data Retention Directive gives the Czech Republic sufficient space for its constitutionally conformal transposition. However, the Constitutional Court has doubts about the necessity and proportionality of the data retention principle in the obiter dictum paragraphs (p. 55-57). The court doubted whether the blanket monitoring of the communications of all citizens in terms of intensity of intervention into the private sphere is necessary and appropriate. The court also doubted the effectiveness of the use of the retained data in combating crime, particularly with reference to the possibility of anonymising communications. The police statistics show that despite a significant increase in the number of requests for traffic and location data, this did not translate into a proportional number of committed and solved crimes.
The Constitutional Court also regards certain provisions of the Criminal Act concerning the use of such data by authorities engaged in criminal proceeding as highly questionable and it called on MPs to consider its modification. According to the Court, it will be necessary to consider each individual case in which data have already been requested in order to be used in criminal proceedings, with respect to the principle of proportionality regarding privacy rights infringement.
SNIPPET: Israel has formally joined the list of seven countries whose data protection laws are considered strong enough for companies there to receive and process personal data from companies in the European Union.
The European Commission has formalised a decision taken last October to deem Israel's data protection laws 'adequate' for the purposes of the Data Protection Directive.
That Directive prevents personal data being sent out of the EU unless to a country whose laws give it the same protection as it would have in the EU. Israel now joins six other countries with that status.
They are Switzerland, Argentina, the Bailiwick of Guernsey, the Isle of Man, the Bailiwick of Jersey and Canada, as long as the recipient of the information is subject to the Canadian Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act
Data can be sent to organisations in the US if they subscribes to the US Department of Commerce's Safe Harbor Privacy Principles.
The decision to approve Israel's data protection laws was made for the Commission by its Vice President Viviane Reding.
On 15 December 2010, in a cassation proceeding, the Polish Supreme Court decided that all electronic press in Poland must be registered. This decision goes along the line traced by its 2007 decision of the same substance, followed by a corresponding press law amendment proposal by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, including obligatory registration of all "electronic press", both of which were strongly criticized by the Polish legal doctrine and internet community.
Freedom of the press is "sacred" to Europe, European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso said Wednesday ahead of talks this week with the Hungarian authorities. Barroso on Friday meets the Budapest government that took over the rotating European Union presidency on January 1, the same day its fiercely-contested new press legislation passed into law. Earlier, commission spokesman Olivier Bailly said Brussels had received a translation of Hungary's controversial 194-page law and its legal experts were checking whether it complied with all EU legislation. The disputed legislation gives a new regulatory authority, the NMHH, the right to impose fines of up to 720,000 euros for material that is considered offensive. The authority also has the right to inspect documents and force journalists to reveal sources in issues related to national security. The media law has drawn criticism from opposition politicians and journalists in Hungary, as well as the Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe (OSCE), Amnesty International, the European parliament and several European governments, such as Germany and France.
Online newspapers and blogs based in Saudi Arabia will now need to register with the Saudi Ministry of Culture and Information to operate. The new guidelines and rules will be added to the current publishing and printing law. Abdul Aziz Khaja, Minister of Information and Culture, stressed that the list is a tool of regulation – rather than restricting freedom of speech. He said it is in line with the development moves that the media sector is witnessing in Saudi Arabia. He added that the rule is open to amendments and improvements. The Ministry of Culture and Information has made the new law available for download on its website. Part of it details the forms of electronic publishing that the law applies to, which include electronic journalism, forums, blogs, broadcasts via mobile, mail lists and chat rooms. Turki Al Rougi, editor-in-chief of Al-Wiam online, in an interview with http://Arabnews.com, said that the fines can be as high as SAR 100,000 (more than USD 25,000), which website owners simply cannot afford as they are mostly individuals, unlike print publications which are owned by big establishments and publishing houses.
Martha L. Arias, Immigration & Internet Law Attorney, Miami
Public officials' comments may be subject to a different standard because their views are crucial to advance the government"s projects. Yet, this does not necessarily mean that public officials agree with every government policy, or that they remain silent when no public policy has been issued. Public officials sometimes, and depending on the specific sector involved, may comment on the public policy they believe should prevail, although it may not be the official one. Thus, how do we balance the government’s interests versus a public official’s freedom of expression? This article presents a decision by the European Court of Justice that answered this question.
The European Court of Justice (ECJ) decided an interested case in 2001 that involved a Community official’s freedom of expression right and the right of the Community to preclude certain publications. Article 17 of the Staff Regulations of Officials of the European Communities states that "[A]n official shall not, whether alone or together with others, publish or cause to be published without the permission of the appointing authority, any matter dealing with the work of the Communities. Permission shall be refused only where the proposed publication is liable to prejudice the interests of the Communities.”
In Commission of the European Communities v. Michael Cwik, [2001] ECJ CELEX LEXIS 332; [2001] ECR I-10269, Cwik, a Community official, asked permission to publish some research and a paper he used in a lecture offered in a Community event in Spain. Cwik was an economist and the paper related to some monetary policy, still not adopted by the Community. Cwik’s superior referred the paper to other high-rank officials to determine whether the paper could be published. One of the high-ranked officials criticized Cwik’s paper and other said it was not appropriate for publication. Cwik’s superior, therefore, denied Cwik the right to publish his paper. Cwik filed a complained and won. The court held that Cwik was protected by the freedom of expression right and could express his view, although this was not the Community’s official view. The Commission of the European Community (CEC) appealed.
On appeal, the ECJ upheld the first instance decision. The ECJ held that Cwik was protected by the freedom of expression and could public his paper because the CEC had not proved that Cwik’s publication was “liable to prejudice the interests of the Communities.” The ECJ said that 'in a democratic society founded on respect for fundamental rights, the fact that an official publicly expresses a point of view different from that of the institution for which he works cannot, in itself, be regarded as liable to prejudice the interests of the Communities.” The ECJ added that “the purpose of the freedom of expression is to enable expression to be given to opinions which differ from those held at an official level. To accept that freedom of expression could be restricted merely because the opinion at issue differs from the position adopted by the institutions would be to negate the purpose of that fundamental right.” The ECJ further explained that Cwik’s publication did not entail any risk to the Community and that it was clear by the paper’s title that this was Cwik’s opinion on the subject rather than the Community’s official view.
Thus, in the European Community, public officials can express or publish their personal views as an exercise of their freedom of expression, provided that their publications are not “liable to prejudice the interests of the Communities,” This means, balancing the right of the public official and the interests of the Communities is pretty factual and may vary in a case-by-case basis.
Hungary's parliament approved a contentious new law Tuesday that will greatly expand the state's power to monitor and penalize private media, drawing protests from opposition parties and civil society. The measure, passed with the votes of the governing centre-right Fidesz party, empowers a recently created new authority, the Media Council, to issue fines for printed, electronic and online media if it determines that coverage is unbalanced, infringes upon human dignity, offends common morals, or fails to cover events of public interest. Fines may reach HUF 200m (USD 950,000) for nationwide television channels, HUF 25m (USD 119,000) for nationwide daily newspapers and Internet news portals, and HUF 10m (USD 48,000) for weekly and monthly publications. The law, slated to take effect Jan. 1, also creates a new institution under the supervision of the Media Council that will formally take over almost all employees of Hungary's state-run television channels, radio stations, as well as state newswire MTI. News production will also be centralized across public media
San Salvador 8.12.10: ARTICLE 19 welcomes the approval of the Access to Public Information Law by El Salvador’s Legislative Assembly on December 2nd, and urges President Mauricio Funes to immediately sign and implement the legislation. The law marks a new era for freedom of information in the country.
“The adoption of the Access to Public Information Law by the Legislative Assembly is an important step forward in the realisation of the right to information in El Salvador,” said Dr. Agnes Callamard, Executive Director of ARTICLE 19. “President Funes must sign the law without delay. Following that, the government must immediately appoint Information Commissioners, set up information offices, and provide training for public officials on how to implement the law,” continued Callamard.
The law was approved after 17 months of debate. Civil society played a fundamental role in pushing for its approval, with the Grupo Promotor de la Ley de Transparencia y Acceso a la Información Pública (LTAIP) providing technical assistance for the elaboration of a draft law. El Salvador is one of the last Central American countries without legislation on access to information.
The new law includes many progressive features including the creation of an independent Information Commission with the power to impose sanctions, and information offices in each government body. The law applies to both government bodies and private organisations that receive public funds or conduct public functions. Finally the law requires that the right to information is widely publicized and promoted.
