Fwd: Empire Strikes Back but not Darth Vader

["Gunnar Anzinger" <anzinger@guug.de>]

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>From: "Y.AKDENIZ" <lawya@lucs-01.novell.leeds.ac.uk>
>To: fight-censorship@vorlon.mit.edu
>Date: Tue, 17 Jun 1997 19:20:34 GMT0BST
>Subject: Empire Strikes Back but not Darth Vader
>Message-Id: <2C2EA993CB2@lucs-01.novell.leeds.ac.uk>


Cyber-Rights & Cyber-Liberties (UK)
<http://www.leeds.ac.uk/law/pgs/yaman/yaman.htm>

For Immediate Release - 17 June 1997

`Empire Strikes Back - but this time it is the Nottinghamshire CC and
not Darth Vader'

The UK Nottinghamshire County Council is continuing to go after others
who either have picked up the report or who are linking to it.
Nottinghamshire County Council, initially has threatened legal action
for copyright infringement against Jeremy Freeman, a 21-year-old
Canadian student and network engineer, for creating a mirror site of
the original report and for linking to Professor Peter Junger's web
site in the USA. 

The last victim of the County Council is Nils Kammenhuber
(hirvi@fsinfo.cs.uni-sb.de) who has mirrored the site in Germany at
http://fsinfo.cs.uni-sb.de/~hirvi/mirror. The County Council has
written him the `famous letter' on Wednesday 11th June 1997 but
because of technical errors in the system Nils received the mail only
yesterday 16th of June 1997. He has removed the report immediately as
the letter threatened him with an action in 24hrs if he did not do so.
He stated in his almost a week reply that:

`As your e-mail was sent to a special mail address
(fs-info@fsinfo.cs.uni-sb.de) whose mailbox is checked only about once
every week, I received the mail this morning, 11 a.m., and read it
about half an hour ago. So I apologize for this delay_I am really very
sorry to not having been able to keep the 24-hours ultimatum set up by
you: it simply was not possible for me to do so.'

It is not known whether the County Council already has taken action
against Nils but it seems likely that their irritating and
intimidating letters are working with some of the mirror sites but not
with the likes of Professor Peter Junger who has stated in his reply
to the County Council that:

`In the end though, I found myself unable to pretend that I am so
naive as to be able to take your threats seriously. If I regret this,
I at least have the consolation of knowing that you did succeed in
bullying poor Jeremy Freeman, a young Canadian who is not learned in
the law, into removing the report---and later a link to my mirror of
the report---from his web site in British Columbia, with the
foreseeable consequences.'

`As far as the Internet is concerned actions by individual governments
can have a profound effect on the rights of citizens around the world'
stated a recent Global Internet Liberty Campaign leaflet (see
http://www.gilc.org). The GILC leaflet continued to say that `users of
the Global Internet must work together to protect freedom of speech
and the right of privacy'. The wide availability of the JET Report on
the Internet is just another of this kind of colloboration by the
netizens on the Internet against nation-states and their local bodies.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Yaman Akdeniz <lawya@leeds.ac.uk>
Cyber-Rights & Cyber-Liberties (UK) at:
http://www.leeds.ac.uk/law/pgs/yaman/yaman.htm
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