Politics · 17 June 2010 ·
Icelandic Modern Media Initiative
There are not enough good news in this world, the bad ones are far more common. in the field of civil rights and press legislation, how many good news are you able to recall for the past one year, and how many bad ones? How often do you hear about a legislation being passed that will actually increase civil rights?
Right now I feel we have come to a point where even deferring legislation that is effectively reducing freedom is seen as a success, as in the halt of the British ID-card scheme or the German web filtering attempts against child pornography. (Noteworthy, that the very secretary Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger who ruled out access blocking against child pornography now thinks it’s appropriate against copyright infringement [DE]) In the meantime we hear about restrictions in the freedom of speech all the time. Let’s take Turkey’s recent ban of a number of Google services as an example, which now not only includes youtube.com, but also translate.google.com, books.google.com, google-analytics.com, tools.google.com and docs.google.com. And whilst officially legal reasons are the reason for the unavailability of these services, semi-officially things might speed up with a little bit of tax money, according to an article by the Hurriet. I don’t know what’s worse. But before we start bashing our Eastern Neighbours, we should try to remove the beam in our eyes than complain about the splinter in theirs. British libel laws are amongst the worst in the Western world and have severely inhibited press coverage about the Trafigura scandal through the imposition of super-injunctions. And similarly, BP is restricting access to their wee little oil spill for journalists, so that they can effectively control what pictures are released from the area. I could recall all these events and cases without straining my memory too much, yet examples of the opposite are rare, and right now there is only one serious initiative that at least attempts to tackle these issues and increase the freedom of the press or civil liberties. (some may have noticed that I have used these two terms interchangeably, and frankly for me they are. Citizens can only exercise certain liberties if they are well informed, which requires a free press)
When last in August last year the Icelandic television station RÚV was about to air news regarding a scandal surrounding the infamous Kaupthing bank (Read up on the background), the bank prevented the broadcast legally with an injunction. All RÚV was able to report was that there was one story they were not allowed to share, but people should inform themselves on wikileaks.org, the original source of their information. Just a note for UK readers — if this had happened here and Kaupthing had used a superinjunction they wouldn’t even be allowed to report this!
In response, a bipartisan, cross-party alliance started working on the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative (IMMI), a comprehensive piece of legislation that intends to combine the most progressive press legislation of various countries, thus creating the by far most liberal press law. There is also a dedicated website for the IMMI with a snippet from Al-Jazeera News, which sums it up pretty well:1
Nevertheless I remained sceptical, history has taught me to be. Far too often such legislation won’t leave the stage of proposal and will be repelled. Also, the notion of a bipartisan coalition seemed utopian, if not unthinkable to me (at least in this area of legislation), knowing only British and German party politics. But now it seems that the
“IMMI has passed! The Icelandic government unanimously supports press freedoms and will put IMMI into law! More soon.
— wikileaks
Wikileaks remains as cryptic as ever, yet according to the timeline on the IMMS website, on the 15th of June the
“Proposal will be processed from the general committee. [And the] Proposal will be voted for by all Parliamentarians.”
Good news, which are also confirmed by the Independent. I am curious what impact this will actually have on the national Icelandic press and the international press, which has the potential to benefit from the IMMS as well. Thus, according to the Independent article, there are rumours that even the German weekly Der Spiegel and ABC News are considering using the increased freedoms in Iceland, and it is hoped that there will be knock-on effects to other countries as well. I am more than optimistic, yet I cannot disband all scepticism. I wonder whether the effects will be as significant, and what role this new piece of legislation will play during Iceland’s EU membership talks. Yet it is a stunning law, a sign of hope. Please excuse my pathos, when I put up a wee Iceland playlist:
Benni Hemm Hemm, bennihemmhemm.com – Retaliate
Seabear, www.seabearia.com – I’ll build you a fire
Björk, bjork.com – Declare Independence
Sigur Rós, sigur-ros.co.uk – Starálfur
1 Isn’t that a Sigur Rós sample that’s looped in the background at around min 3.20?
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