WikiLeaks inspired "New media haven" proposal passes Parliament

iceland is a beautiful country and icelanders are an amazing bunch of people who are very forward thinking and extremely independant. if anyone can pull this off it will be them. if you ever get the chance to go there and travel the country - do it!

these people have suffered amazing hardships throughout their history on the island and survived, yet they have fully embraced the wonders and joys of technology only recently. the 2nd world war transformed their country beyond anything they had known before and for such an old fashioned country they have amazing forward thinking.

you really have to have an understading of icelandic mentality to know that if any country in the world will succeed with this endevour it will be them.

Great news!!
Thanks justyc!
I've been wondering about this for awhile..
about time we got some good news! lol
many thanks!

This is good news indeed.

A celebration is needed!!

Here is a song for all journalists out there:

The Icelandic parliament has voted unanimously to create what are intended to be the strongest media freedom laws in the world. And Iceland intends these measures to have international impact, by creating a safe haven for publishers worldwide — and their servers.

The proposal, known as the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative, requires changes to Icelandic law to strengthen journalistic source protection, freedom of speech, and government transparency. “The Prime Minister voted for it, and the Minister of Finance, and everybody present,” says Icelandic Member of Parliament Birgitta Jónsdóttir, who has been the proposal’s chief sponsor. Her point is that Iceland is serious about this. The country is in the mood for openness after a small group of bankers saddled it with crippling debt, and the proposal ties neatly into the country’s strategy to be prime server real-estate.

www.niemanlab.org...

seems only the independent paper in the uk has reported the story - can't see it anywhere else. you would think (or hope) that the mainstream media would be all over this story -

www.independe... nt.co.uk/news/world/europe/iceland-rewrites-law-to-create-haven-for-investigative-reporting-2002591.html

Iceland has passed a sweeping reform of its media laws that supporters say will make the country an international haven for investigative journalism.

The new package of legislation was passed unanimously at 4am yesterday in one of the final sessions of the Icelandic parliament, the Althingi, before its summer break.

Created with the involvement of the whistleblowing website Wikileaks, it increases protection for anonymous sources, creates new protections from so-called "libel tourism" and makes it much harder to censor stories before they are published.

"It will be the strongest law of its kind anywhere," said Birgitta Jonsdottir, MP for The Movement party and member of the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative, which first made the proposals. "We're taking the best laws from around the world and putting them into one comprehensive package that will deal with the fact that information doesn't have borders any more."

Wikileaks has been involved in the drafting of the package of laws alongside Ms Jonsdottir from the beginning of the process more than a year ago. Its founder, Julian Assange, worked from Iceland on the organisation's release of the incendiary video of an apparently unprovoked American helicopter attack in Iraq that left eighteen people dead, including two journalists.

Mr Assange did not respond to requests for comment via email yesterday. But in February, he wrote: "All over the world, the freedom to write about powerful groups is being smothered. Iceland could be the antidote to secrecy havens ... it may become an island where openness is protected – a journalism haven."

Because the package includes provisions that will stop the enforcement of overseas judgements that violate Icelandic laws, foreign news organisations are said to have expressed an interest in moving the publication of their investigative journalism to Iceland. According to Ms Jonsdottir, Germany's Der Spiegel and America's ABC News have discussed the possibility.

More immediately, it is hoped that the changes will rebuild the Icelandic public's belief in the press. "Trust in the media was very high before the crash, but then it sank," said Hoskuldur Kari Schram, a reporter with Stod 2 television in Reykjavik. "Maybe this will be a step in the right direction."

new york times now reporting the story -

thelede.blogs.nytimes.com... -wikileaks-in-icelands-parliament/

At 4 a.m. on Thursday, Iceland’s Parliament, the Althing, voted unanimously in favor of a package of legislation aimed at making the country a haven for freedom of expression by offering legal protection to whistle-blower Web sites like WikiLeaks, which helped to craft the proposal.

As the Web site Ice News reports, “One of the inspirations for the proposal was the dramatic August 2009 gagging of of Iceland’s national broadcaster, RUV by Iceland’s then largest bank, Kaupthing.”

One of the sponsors of the proposal in the Althing, Birgitta Jonsdottir, told my colleague Noam Cohen in February that Iceland hoped to become “the inverse of a tax haven,” by offering journalists and publishers some of the most aggressive protections for free speech and investigative journalism in the world. “They are trying to make everything opaque,” she said. “We are trying to make it transparent.”

As Mr. Cohen explained in an article on the package of laws that passed on Thursday:

The proposal, the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative, combines in a single piece of legislation provisions from around the world: whistle-blower laws and rules about Internet providers from the United States; source protection laws from Belgium; freedom of information laws from Estonia and Scotland, among others; and New York State’s law to counteract “libel tourism,” the practice of suing in courts, like Britain’s, where journalists have the hardest time prevailing. [...]

The plan to make Iceland a world leader in journalism protection took shape in December with the assistance of two leaders of the whistle-blower Web site WikiLeaks.org, Julian Assange and Daniel Schmitt, whose publish-nearly-anything ideology has given them personal experience with news media laws around the globe.

On Tuesday, Philip Shenon of The Daily Beast reported that Mr. Assange had told supporters that the site would soon release another video of an American military strike that killed civilians:

After several days underground, the founder of the secretive Web site WikiLeaks has gone public to disclose that he is preparing to release a classified Pentagon video of a U.S. airstrike in Afghanistan last year that left as many as 140 civilians dead, most of them children and teenagers.

In an e-mail message obtained by The Daily Beast that was sent to WikiLeaks supporters in the United States Tuesday, Julian Assange, the Web site’s Australian-born founder, also defends a 22-year-old Army intelligence specialist who is now under arrest in Kuwait on charges that he leaked classified Pentagon combat videos, as well as 260,000 State Department cables, to WikiLeaks.

however - it was reported in their blog section rather than in the news section. this is the current standard of journalism and reporting of important stories. the world needs iceland now more than ever!

Dear Mr. Julian Assange,

I've heard that you are in possession of some seriously damaging and history-making documents that could help shed some light on what our government and other governments of the world have been up to. PLEASE, release these!! I can't speak for the rest of the country or world for that matter, but I would very much appreciate knowing what has been going on under the so-called blanket of "national security" that our leaders have deemed. I understand some things should be secretive in the best interests of our "national security" and safety, but I don't consider nefarious and potentially criminal acts to fall into that category. Thanks!

Lucky

reply to post by Misoir


HA ! Iceland joining the EU... thats going to be like watching a bunch of nerds trying to order a nation full of fairminded BERSERKERS to keep thier mouths shut and do as they are told.... who thinks that particular attempt will fail horrificaly?Hands up???

*raised hand*

reply to post by TrueBrit


Well your signature doesn't provide a promising prospect for humanity.

A big ripple can be manifested from a small stone.

Would these new laws protect Gary Mckinnon in the event he was ever set free and able to emmigrate there..?

reply to post by riley

Probably not, cause he was a hacker, rather than a receiver of leaked documents. I dunno though, that's just my guess.

He's a champ too though.



Does anyone know of any english speaking world-news programs/stations based in Iceland???

reply to post by ghostsoldier


If you would care to take a deeper look at that statement for a moment then some things may become apparant to you , that make you think a little differently.
First, in my sig there is no mention of firearms. This is because I think that using them to kill people is possibly one of the disgusting things we ever learned to do . I believe we as a species should revert to sword use because then at least our armed forces would all be balanced in technology , and no one army would be better than another, because all nations now have the same access to the martial practices of other cultures. That would make war a much scarier prospect since ANY campaign would instantly be a meat grinder, and there would never be public support for it, meaning all the troops stay home, where they belong.
Also , there is another angle on my sig. I have put up with a hell of a lot of crap in my life. I have never been to war, but I have been shot at, and had people try to stab me, beat me, and otherwise destroy me since I was five years of age. All because the government insisted I go to school. I have had to learn since that although not all of life is like that, sometimes the only thing that some folks listen to is the voice of brutality, spoken harshly, and punctuated with a fist. When I was a kid, this is not what I wanted from my life. I wanted to run in green feilds, sit on the roof with a telescope and look into the universe , make friends and help people. I still want some of those things, but all I have had is reminders of why none of those wishes and wants can come true, reminders like the scum on the street corner,psychological brethren to those who tried before them, to intimidate and control me, and even destroy me.
My signature sir is a testament to what keeps me on my feet when Im bleeding , and keeps my head clear when Im going insane.
I dont give much of a damn if you decide that having that signature means all sorts of things that arent true, but remember ... they arent true.
I dont support the war, I dont support extremism, I dont support police brutality or big government. I am a good person , in a bad world.