One of the things that disturbed me in the past week is the news about bloggers being sued under libel laws. By publishing your thoughts to mass audience, a blog is considered in par with publications in news papers and other medias which supposedly abide by the libel laws. Libel is a legal term that describes a written form of defamation, which the dictionary defines as a "false or unjustified injury to someone's good reputation". Though I agree that one should refrain from publishing malicious or unfounded content, I also tend to think that expanding the scope of libel laws to bloggers is a little far fetched.
I think everyone should have the "freedom" to express themselves. If you look back at history, the definition of freedom has been changing constantly. I think freedom of an individual has been compromised time to time for the supposedly greater benefit of the wholesomeness of a community/nation. Though I partly agree with that notion, I think there are certain fundamental things where such compromises should not be made, especially, freedom of expression. My point is that, if someone is stupid and the whole world is listening to them, why should the stupid person be considered gullible. Bloggers are not trying to advertise their thoughts, they just express them and I am not sure why that is wrong. An individual could be irrational from time to time. Even the biggest nations with tons of information and knowledge make irrational decisions resulting in loss of billions and billions of dollars. So, trying to go behind an individual for his/her (ir)rationality is plain absurdity. I feel that, going behind bloggers is just a strategy to restrict information flow, and hence freedom of expression and I strongly condemn that. Wondering what you guys think...
Thursday, March 09, 2006
Blogger's Freedom
Posted by Suresh Sankaralingam at 11:29 AM
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3 comments:
Libel laws down down!
Bloggers otrumai Onguha!
We want blogging freedom!
Mindframes-ai kaidhu sei..!
Oops.. Sorry wrong gosham!
Mindframes-ai vidudhalai sei!
If you are famous and you say something it matters (although most people dont care!), there are "people" who are ready to make issue out of it. Maybe the laws are for the people, to be extra careful on what you blog, so that the "people" can be kept quiet.
In ideal world, there should be NO control on freedom of expression. Restricting freedome of expression is a VERy subjective thing. A rule which sounds perfectly fine for you may not be acceptable for me. If that is the case, how to put universal rules for bloggers since it has international audience?
I am ok with basic universal rules (Don't provoke or teach humans to kill others etc)
On second thoughts, even that is difficult to write.
The real problem is we live in the world where some people have the ability to make good judgements on what they read and others who don't have that ability and hence can be manipulated.
With this disparity, unfortunately we have to have some rules even that means restricting freedom of expression :(
No, if you are a democracy and are fighting wars to make other nations democratic, you better act like one. I agree - bloggers must be free to write what they will. However, I also agree with Brainwaves - Terrorism in any form should be punished, even in blog content.
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