[FYI] (Fwd) FC: Spain plans to require all web sites to register, pa

["Axel H Horns" <horns@ipjur.com>]

------- Forwarded message follows -------
Date sent:      	Mon, 14 May 2001 09:59:08 -0400
To:             	politech@politechbot.com
From:           	Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
Subject:        	FC: Spain plans to require all web sites to register, pay fees
Copies to:      	davidc@kriptopolis.com
Send reply to:  	declan@well.com

[These complaints by the Kriptopolis folks against Spain's proposal,
as described, seem justified. Yet Kriptopolis appears to explicitly
argue that "free distribution of information" online should not be
regulated, while tacitly conceding that commercial distribution of
information should be. That's short-sighted. Just as the Net makes
anyone a potential journalist, it makes thousands of hobbyist sites
(who put up banner ads to help pay the bills) commercial publishers.
Better to limit regulation as applied to all sites, rather than make
arbitrary distinctions. In fact, one could even argue that
relatively-wealthy universities and NGOs can afford registration fees
far more easily than the 14-year olds running Britney Spears and Star
Trek fan sites, or their Spanish equivalents. --Declan]

***********

Date: Mon, 14 May 2001 08:29:56 -0400
From: Robert Guerra <rguerra@yahoo.com>
Subject: Say NO to LSSI. Freedom of Speech in Danger in Spain.
Cc: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>

I thought this might be of interest to the folks on here.

Let's support David Casacuerta and Kriptopolis <www.kriptopolis.com>
on this one.


regards

Robert



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User-Agent: Microsoft-Outlook-Express-Macintosh-Edition/5.02.2106
Date: Sat, 12 May 2001 12:38:09 +0100 Subject: LSSi From: David
Casacuberta <davidc@kriptopolis.com> To: Robert Guerra
<robert@cryptorights.org> Status: R

Hola Robert!

No sé si has leído la situación actual en España vía Kriptopolis, y la
aprobación de la maldita ley esa, la LSSI, pero la situación es
realmente muy grave.

<I'm not sure if you've read the terrible LSSI new law that has been
proposed in Spain. It's really quite serious>

Aquí te paso un texto en inglés por si lo puedes distribuir. Nos
gustaría obtener también apoyo internacional. Internet es una cosa de
todos, y es importante que se conozca en todo el mundo estos intentos
censores en nuestro país.

<I'm sending you along a copy of the text in Spain so you can
distribute it for us. We'd like to obtain as much international
support as possible. The Internet belongs to everyone, and it's
important that the world know the possible censorship which might be
legislated in Spain>


david
================

Say NO to LSSI. Freedom of Speech in Danger in Spain.

By:  David Casacuberta <davidc@kriptopolis.com>

Freedom of expression is in real danger now in Spain, if the
Electronic Commerce (Society of Information Services) Directive is
approved, most websites that are not "properly" registered would be
considered illegal and have to face enormous fees which will in fact
paralyse their activity forever.

This directive -ready to be approved in the Spanish Parliament any
time- has invented the concept of "society of information services"
and wants to legislate plain exchange of information as an economic
activity, ruling out therefore, any publisher -like NGOs- which do not
really perform any commercial activities and can not face all the
legal and bureucratic activities that the Electronic Commerce (Society
of Information Services) Directive wants.

According to article 2, free distribution of information, even if it
implies no direct payments from customers is an "society of
information services" and, therefore, subjcet to this electronic
commerc directive. You don't have to be paid to be considered an actor
in the  "society of information services": as it is stated later in
the article 2,  search engines or on-line compilation of information
are also  "society of information services", which means that news
digests, electronic libraries, a repository of academic papers,NGOs
that publish regular news about violations of human rights... have to
conduct their actions in cyberspace according to an electronic
commerce directive, which is absolutely preposterous.


Strangely enough, the only exceptions considered under this article
are: Public Broadcasting -TV and Radio, TV Teletext" but no reference
to NGOs, universities... e-mail is also excluded, as long as you don't
use it for  "society of information services", but then, if you are an
NGO and keep a newsletter about human rights violations you are again
liable under this directive.

As you can see, the scope of this directive is not at all electronic
commerce, but the whole Internet

Article 50 makes it mandatory to register any webs related to these
"Services". Therefore this directive may turn ilegal any website that
has not been publicly registered and has its own domain name, most
websites in Spain, as you may suspect. Article 50 stablish a fee of
90.000 euros! if there is a "lack of communication to the public
register in which they are registered, of the domain name or names
which they use to offer society of information services".

Article 11 makes impossible anonymous websites. According to this
article, it is mandatory to give your

a) Name, social/commercial address.
b) All the data submited to a commercial/public register

Plus several extra data if you are really developing electronic
commerce activities.

Also see that, as long as you are a "society of information services"
provider it is mandatory to present data under b), the data submitted
to a register, this clearly imply that you *must* register before
opening a website. So, even if you don't mind to put your own name,
but you are not registered anywhere, it means you are violating
article 11 as well.

Also article 30 makes it mandatory to conduct all the operations with
the user as if it was a commercial transaction: that is, you have to
provide a proper contract, language of choice and several other
measures that make sense if we are considering a prper commercial
transaction, but which are nonsensical if we are talking about just
people exchanging information in the web.


Let's consider this hypothetic case: a registered NGO in Spain with no
funds to get a proper domain name or webspace has decided to put a
website where they inform about human rights in Spain. They offer
webpages with general information plus a mailing list devoted to these
issues. According to the law, they should have registered a domain
name, but they haven't, plus they are "publicizing some activities"
and they didn't register themselves anywhere, so that's another
illicit act, both violates article 50.4. Plus, they are not conducting
this exchanging of information with a proper commercial model, so they
are also violating article 30. Even worse, if they want to be
anonymous, which is understandable if they are dennouncing human
rights violations in Spain, they are also breaking article 11. All
together, this poor NGO  could be faced with a fee of 29.000.000
pesetas (aprox 175.000 euros) just for publishing a website. The
message for corrupt politicians/judges is clear. If there is some
annoying group which keeps an annoying website, just use the directive
and fry them with enormous fees.



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-- 

--
Robert Guerra <rguerra@yahoo.com>, Fax: +1(303) 484-0302
WWW Page <http://pgp.greatvideo.com>, ICQ # 10266626
PGPKeys  <http://pgp.greatvideo.com/keys/rguerra/>




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