[FYI] (Fwd) [GILC-plan] AP: Sites protest strict new Net law

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

------- Forwarded message follows -------
Date sent:      	Mon, 28 Oct 2002 16:54:21 -0500
To:             	gilc-plan@gilc.org
From:           	Bobson Wong <bwong@dfn.org>
Subject:        	[GILC-plan] AP: Sites protest strict new Net law

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Sites protest strict new Net law
Monday, October 28, 2002 Posted: 9:14 AM EST (1414 GMT)
http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/internet/10/28/spain.internet.ap/index.ht
ml

MADRID, Spain (AP) -- Times have been hard for Georgeos
Diaz-Montexano's online course in Egyptian hieroglyphics. One student
in two years, $12 in tuition.

But Diaz-Montexano pulled the plug on what he calls the world's only
Spanish-language Egyptology site for a different reason: fears of
hassle or a hefty fine under Spain's new law regulating cyberspace.

Any Spain-based Web site that engages in commerce -- even a struggling
Egyptology site -- must now register with the government under a
stringent new law that took effect on Oct. 12.

The tough rules have prompted at least 300 Web site owners to take
their pages offline in protest, according to Kriptopolis, a digital
rights and Internet security site coordinating the campaign. It has
drawn support from online civil libertarians across Europe.

Many site operators say their protest is open-ended, but others are
gone for good. Still others say the law is so hard to decipher they've
gone blank while studying how to comply. Many are small-scale,
not-for-profit operations like Diaz-Montexano's.

"With this law, as always, it's the little guy that gets hurt," said
the 36-year-old archaeologist and historian.

His site provided free articles on ancient Egypt, and the only
fee-based component was the advanced-level continuation of a
beginner's hieroglyphics course.

The government says the law, which stems from European Union
directives, aims to encourage online commerce by making the Internet a
safer place to do business. It wants companies operating on the
Internet to be subject to the same tax and commerce laws as
traditional firms.

But opponents say Spain has gone far beyond the spirit of the EU
guidelines, trying to regulate cyberspace more strictly than it does
its own patch of Earth and robbing the Net of its information-sharing
richness.

"This law is a huge blow to freedom of expression in Spain," said
Kriptopolis lawyer Carlos Sanchez Almeida.

In addition to being compelled to sign up with the government's
mercantile register, the law requires Web sites that carry out
commercial transactions to display a company address and tax number.
The idea is to give customers a physical place to turn if a problem
arises.

Law also applies to foreign-hosted sites

The law would also apply to foreign-hosted Web sites if the people
transacting business on them are physically in Spain.

Even not-for-profit sites that take in revenue -- say, from
advertising banners -- are considered to be doing business, even if
they operate at a loss.

And while such sites don't have to register, the government says, they
do have to publish the webmaster's name, address and national
identification number.

Other provisions of the law oblige Internet access providers and Web
sites to store customers' "connection and traffic data" for up to a
year. But the law doesn't specify if this means just IP addresses --
individual computers' fingerprints -- or other more detailed
information.

The statute goes even further. It says that if Spanish authorities
deem something on a foreign-hosted Web site threatening to Spain's
national defense, public order, consumer rights or other values, they
can order Spanish operators to sever access to that site.

That clause puts Spain in the same league of content control as Saudi
Arabia and China, said Jonathan Zittrain, a Harvard Law School expert
on international Internet regulation.

Fines for violations of the law are as high as 600,000 euros
($590,000), although none have been reported.

Government says protests are overreaction

The government calls the Web protests a hasty overreaction and says it
is working out details of exactly how it will apply the law.

Sanchez Almeida says many people are troubled by the on-screen 
identification clause. He said 90 percent of Spain's Web pages are run
by self-employed people or nonprofit groups.

"Now, through the Internet anybody can know who they are. And to a
certain extent that endangers their privacy," Sanchez Almeida said.

He said the law will discourage people from creating Web sites simply
because a subject interests them and they want to share their
knowledge.

"Until now this was the essence of the Internet, what generated its
spontaneity," Sanchez Almeida said. "Now it is a strictly regulated
activity, sometimes even more regulated than the real world."

Miguel Perez, president of the Association of Internet Users, which
claims 8,000 members, said his consumer group backs the display of a
site operator's identification information.

"From the user's point of view, what I want is for a person doing
business with me to tell me who they are," he said.

But Perez has problems with other elements of the law, such as the
requirement that access providers save information on what pages their
customers visit.

"What is this going to cause?" Sanchez Almeida asked rhetorically.
"Censorship."

--
Bobson Wong
Executive Director
Digital Freedom Network
1372 Broadway, 20th Floor
New York, NY 10018
U.S.A.
Phone: +(1-646) 223-1282
Fax: +(1-646) 223-1290
E-mail: bwong@dfn.org
Web: http://dfn.org

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