IMC in Prague Posts Protest Against Censorship on IMC - UK

Labour extended arm of censorship on this site is a new form of rape!

Don't you mean *someone* has posted criticism of UK *onto* the Prague IMC site - rather than IMC Prague have posted (I looked at the site)

- These are issues for all of the IMC sites throughout the world.

All IMC sites have been dealing with the issues of editorial and censorship (many of them are in fact censoring) - all of them are developing guidelines as the IMC web project develops - remember this is still a young project.

Not all IMC sites are the same, just have a look through all of them.

The open access thing IMC sites are doing is great - it worked brilliantly for coverage of the major protests that have been going on in washington and seattle etc let's hope it continues working.

It is different though turning what was intended to provide concentrated open access coverage of specific events into something ongoing - indeed most IMC sites seem to be turning into such ongoing news services.

Your point about letting anyone post whatever they want, while in principle is a great idea (isn't that pretty much the whole of the web or a million and one discussion forums?), does present possible problems for the way IMC sites have developed.

If I wanted could I post 100 articles I've written about my thoughts on X Y and Z and I could in effect trash the site - that's the whole point about these sort of open access systems - they rely on people co-operating and using them with some respect.

This is a big issue - but I think the stuff the UK have said about the site being used for news is a sensible point. Though what you say about what actually defines news is also an important point.

The main thing that all IMC sites seem to agree upon is that it's important to be transparent in any editorial that goes on. I think this is the most important thing of all - also there is a difference between the kind of censorship you talk about in relation to the corporate media / news networks (ie they just don't cover things) and what most IMC's are talking about which is more editorial (items are still available).

Perhaps you should mail the UK people with your views and/or post them to the discussion forum they have set up about this issue (as opposed using the news section for *discussion* - though I guess you would argue the post on the prague site is news :-). There are lots of places and ways in which these issues are being discussed - if you really feel strongly why don't you join the global imc editorial discussions.

L50.

What worries me when i read all these postings (round the world) about censorship is that people don't seem to be living in the real world - where some questions don't have simple answers! I am prepared to think that the UK IMC understand the issues around censorship and the dominance of the mainstream media (otherwise why are they doing all the work needed to set up these IMC's?) and are developing ways of working out their site accordingly.
By this i don't mean do not criticise - but maybe a few e-mails to them to ask, would be better than spraying the world sites with hysteria about the evil people in London... I can not help wondering why these postings are appearing on the Prague and the Belgium sites - is this really the forum to question and debate? or is this an abuse of an open posting system that only shows the problems the UK IMC were trying to solve in the first place?
An open medium is only open to the extent that people want to trawl through all the crap put up - i have years of experience doing projects against censorship and editorial control - and believe the issues are a lot more complicated that most of the screaming appreciates. If people want to rant and rave and argue small details of politics that is great but there are better forums than the IMC's.
Many people are involved in building a more 'democratic' news medium, but we also realise we are not sitting in some nice safe objective position - this is not possible - we all are subjective and can not claim the high moral ground on wanting to inform people of our views, all we can state is that our views are not being heard, and therefore we set up new inititives to change this. I believe the IMC network is a strong example of this - one of many and is learning from others that have worked in these areas before, be it print, TV, or radio. It is an ongoing struggle that needs people to work and debate together not divide and accuse.
I find the IMC's valuable because they report the activist actions happening around the world - information that has always been hard to hear, and i hope it inspires others as much as it has inspired me.

Joram,

Your comments comparing internet censorship at the IMC-UK and rape are totally out of line. In my opinion rape is something which should not be trivialised in this way. Please do not use such emotive and inappropriate language in this context.

Cheers.

something here is going a bit unfair. the inc uk people have shown that they are not some idiotic new labour control freaks - have a look at what they did on may day
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/newsite/index2.php3
still i'd like to see the administration page to be public, as all the other imc's do - why's that?
but still: have a look what the imc editorial discussion list covers:
 http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/public/imc-editorial/

they've put up the admin pages now - in another discussion area they say it was not viewable because of security concerns but that transparency is more important.

This and other discussions about what is an acceptable editorial policy for IMC's brings up some good points. I think that we need to look at how indymedia got started, what it means to have IMC's be decentralized networks of power rather than one central body, what free speech is as opposed to democratic, community, or radical speech.

First off, the Independent Media Center was founded in Seattle during the organizing leading up to the N30 protests against the WTO. Since then other IMC's have been created roughly on the Seattle model. Some IMC's are closely connected to the network, others wrote their own software, developed their own structures, but accepted the general principles and used the indymedia name and logo. The UK-IMC started out to cover the mayday protests in London and only came in to closer contact with the indymedia network after the M1 protests.

It is worth looking at the Seattle Mission Statement to understand where indymedia is coming from. It's also of particular relevance to this discussion that free speech does *not* appear anywhere in the Seattle or uk mission statements.

The Seattle Mission Statement:
The Independent Media Center is a grassroots organization committed to using media production and distribution as a tool for promoting social and economic justice. It is our goal to further the self-determination of people under-represented in media production and content, and to illuminate and analyse local and global issues that impact ecosystems, communities and individuals. We seek to generate alternatives to the biases inherent in the corporate media controlled by profit, and to identify and create positive models for a sustainable and equitable society.

I wasn't involved in the discussions where the Seattle IMC came up with that mission statement but this is my speculation as to why they do not use free speech in describing their mission. Free speech is a concept that is rooted in liberal romanism. The idea is wrapped up in the ideologies of Locke, Hume, and Rousseau. As Leftists why should we reject their ideology in the political and economic spheres but still maintain this unquestioned attachment to the concept of 'free speech'?

Somebody brought up the example of "Go to Hyde Park and tell it there" as what people say when we try and exercise our 'right' to free speech. What they are telling us, beyond fuck off, is that you have every right to speak, but no right to distribution or to have people listen to you. The earlier liberal conceptions of free speech were developed in a period where we had very limited communications technologies. You could talk to people directly, and you could run a printing press. Either way you got the freedom to speak your mind. What you didn't get is anybody being obligated to listen to you. For that you have to pay to build a distribution system. That's what the early english labor press did quite successfully until the corporate papers underpriced them out of business. It all was fully within the scope of free speech, the labor writers were still free to cover and write about everything, but without distribution nobody could hear them.

So, we basically have this romantic notion of free speech, and the reality that free speech doesn't mean anything with out a distribution system. A large part of what indymedia does is act as a distribution system. It's not a distribution system of whatever people want to post, or even representing every view regarding political topics. It is a distribution system who's goal is "to further the self-determination of people under-represented in media production and content, and to illuminate and analyse local and global issues that impact ecosystems, communities and individuals."

This is a very different thing than Rousseau's conception of free speech. I think that this conception of indymedia is much more radical than simple being a medium for free speech. The Seattle mission statement goes on to say how we mean to bring about those goals. "We seek to generate alternatives to the biases inherent in the corporate media controlled by profit, and to identify and create positive models for a sustainable and equitable society."

In attempting to create positive models we need to be able to consider the value and nature of speech and how our speech can be used to create a sustainable and equitable society. I personally find the experimentation with community moderation where the viewers vote and shape the editorial perspective of the site to be very exciting. Hopefully we can continue to experiment with new ideas and models.

Regarding the decentralized nature of IMC's. The UK-IMC is free to develop and experiment with their own editorial policy and mission. This means that they could adopt a policy of their newswire being a free speech medium with no editorial control or censorship. It also means that they can focus on just news, and not issues, editorials, or discussion posts. It is up to the uk-imc editorial collective.

Part of the weakness of IMC's is that we have no method of making decisions across the network. I would like every IMC to come out strongly in favor of having open, transparent, anti-authoritarian, and democratic structure, but that has not been something that all IMC's have adopted.

In Solidarity,
Rabble

This free-speech argument is very important- but I was wondering whether there has been any discussion of Indymedia and defamataory liability? And no, I'm not a lawyer, and yes, I am an activist committed to social change.
Just how long are messages posted before they are scrutinised and edited? And are they scrutinised in all Indymedia sites?
In the United States it is argueable, for instance, that an unmoderated news service is LESS liable than a moderated one to an action of defamation- because to moderate indicates editorial control.
Also, Indymedia challenges defamation law on an international basis- so even though an unmoderated list may be ok in the U.S- it may be held as liable in the UK or Asutralia for instance.
Potentially, defamatory material could be actioned across a number of countries jurisdictions, and be downright criminal in others such as China etc.
Is there any defamation action that has occurred as a result of an Indymedia posting?
Let me know- I might be able to help!
 David.Grant@jcu.ede.au
[P.S- I am doing a thesis on internet defamation :)]