For those of you who don't know me, I am an Aussie. I live in Tasmania, the island state to the south of the mainland. I also lay claim to being the closest webmaster to the South Pole, unless my partner Marie is in the kitchen and then she is.
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"How many of you thought that you were safe from the laws of other countries because you were behind your own country's borders?" |
Regardless of who is standing where in our house we are a long way from most other webmasters. However, that isolation in no way protects us from what is going on in the rest of the internet world. How could it when the internet brings us and the world so close together?
I guess it's one of those strange quirky things about the internet. It brings us all so closely together and yet we feel somehow secure because we think we are, in a sense, insulated from the rest of the world by our national borders.
Two things have happened in the last couple of days that have got me thinking about the false sense of security that our national borders tend to give us.
The first thing happened in the US while the second happened here in Australia. At first glance it would appear that one is going to have an immediate impact on thousands of people who live in the US while the other will affect just one man who lives in Australia. Even though both things happened in totally separate countries I suspect that each of these things will have a major impact on everyone who earns a living from the internet.
The first thing was the collapse of United Airlines. Now I've never flown United Airlines, I own no stock in United Airlines, I don't think I have even seen a United Airlines plane at an airport and yet I suspect that the collapse of this company is going to have a big impact on me and everyone else.
The US economy is already on shaky ground and analysts predict that, as United cuts is costs, the flow-on effect is going to make the economy even worse. In times of economic difficulty people cut their spending on all but essentials and so that will impact on our industry.
Even before the collapse of United there were experienced webmasters reporting poor sales figures in a season that is traditionally good for our business. Now that the second largest airline in the world has filed for bankruptcy I expect our sales figures will drop even more.
If an airline had gone bust in the US 20 years ago the affect would have limited. In these modern times of the internet the fall of United Airlines is going to affect the bottom line of people all over the globe.
The second thing that happened involved an American company with an on-line ezine, and an Australian businessman that very few Americans would have ever heard of and a matter of law that has the potential to have a drastic effect on the internet.
About 2 years ago Dow Jones published a story on line in America in which they described this Australian businessman in less than glowing terms. In the US the terms that they used were quite legal and quite mild when compared to how some people are described on adult webmaster boards.
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However, Australia has very draconian defamation laws and what Dow Jones said about this businessman could never have been published here in Australia.
The businessman decided to sue for defamation of character and started legal proceedings here in Australia. Dow Jones claimed that Australian courts had no jurisdiction because the article was posted by an American company to their American website that resided on a server in the US.
The matter went as far as Australia's High Court and the judges of that court have just handed down a unanimous decision. They say that, regardless of where the article was published and regardless of where the server is located, if the website can be seen in Australia then Australian laws can be applied.
Experts believe that this ruling will have a profound affect on internet publishing.
How many of you thought that you were safe from the laws of other countries because you were behind your own country's borders? Dow Jones undoubtedly thought they were but they have just found out the hard way.
What are the implications for our industry? Already some webmasters in certain countries have to be cautious with their personal details on Whois because of the fear of prosecution from their own governments. Will this ruling put the rest of us in the same situation?
Of course there are many people who would say that they have nothing to worry about, they live in the US and no-one can touch them. I bet Dow Jones wished that were true because they stand to loose a very large sum of money through this litigation.
So here we have a court case that very few people knew anything about and yet it has the potential to affect us all.
My point in all this? Adult webmasters are no longer isolated regardless of where in the world we live. In today's world of a global economy and instant global communications via the internet we are totally connected and totally exposed and that does not make me happy.