Link by Link - A Vision of Iceland as a Haven for Journalists - NYTimes.com.
As the New York Times reports:
A banking scandal nearly bankrupted this tiny island nation (population: barely 300,000) little more than a year ago, but Iceland is considering a new vision: to become a haven for journalists and publishers by offering some of the most aggressive protections for free speech and investigative journalism in the world.
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.
“We would become the inverse of a tax haven,” said Birgitta Jonsdottir, a member of Parliament and a sponsor of the initiative. “They are trying to make everything opaque. We are trying to make it transparent.”
I think that deserves an unambiguous welcome. I can see file servers moving to Iceland from all over the world. And, no doubt, they hope people too.
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This is a really interesting, innovative idea from Iceland and I wish it every success. Although, if an article of the type that Ben Goldacre or Simon Singh got sued for were published in Iceland, would that be any defence against a libel action being brought against the article writer in a British court? Because I’m sure people have been sued in UK courts for articles published in the US before. Would you have to be an Icelandic citizen to benefit from these provisions? These questions may be naive but I’m an economist whose understanding of libel law is extremely limited, so bear with me!
@Howard
I genuinely don’t know the answer to that Howard
What I do know is that, as many papers report this morning, reform of UK libel law is well over due
Richard
Having followed this argument in Private Eye (but with no other knowledge) my understanding is that it is necessary for the article to have been brought into the UK in some way for the action to succeed.