
Iceland passes the "Wikileaks law". What will it mean for journalists? - pesco
http://www.niemanlab.org/2010/06/what-will-icelands-new-media-laws-mean-for-journalists/
======
avar
No law has been passed yet, this is a "proposal for a parliamentary
resolution" (þingsályktunartillaga). Which basically means that parliament has
expressed formal interest in getting legislation drafted to implement this.

How that legislation will look will depend on a lot of committee work down the
road, and what parliament actually ends up passing is another open question.

Still, this proposal has the backing of several ministries, so there's a large
change that something good will be passed. But whether it'll fulfill all the
promises of the IMMI plan remains to be seen.

------
jarek
Disappointing to see yet another publication not aware that most Icelanders
have patronymics, not last names.

~~~
maximilian
Ok, so I wiki'd what patronymics are (your "last" name is based on your
father's name), but could you elaborate. Did the author use "Jónsdóttir"
incorrectly?

~~~
jarek
Yes. Birgitta Jónsdóttir is properly referred to as Birgitta Jónsdóttir or
just Birgitta, or by her first and middle name if disambiguation is required.
Jónsdóttir alone is meaningless as far as name goes. Icelandic phone books are
ordered by first name.

edit: although to be fair, in the context of an article written in English
aimed at a general audience this is not an easy situation. Properly using just
the first name might throw off people who don't know about the Icelandic
conventions (that would be most of them) who might then consider this use as
strangely personal. On the other hand, repeatedly using the full name might
look weird too. Personally I'm not convinced these are worth the trade-off of
being culturally incorrect, but I'm not the one making the calls.

~~~
wmeredith
Whatever. Good writers write for their audience. This article was written for
an audience residing outside of Iceland.

~~~
electromagnetic
I read a ton of articles that routinely use a persons first name, why suddenly
should proper formality be artificially upheld in context of a culture that
uses patronyms? They use first names as names, and in the context of an
article they can use a first name without it getting confusing.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
But in certain areas and with certain publications this clashes with house
style. For example the tabloids/red-tops are happy to refer to Boris Johnson
(London Mayor) as BoJo or simply Boris, the broadsheets would say Boris
Johnson first and then use "Johnson" to refer to the person as using a first
name is considered impolite and/or disrespectful in formal writing (which the
broadsheets tend towards at least in non-editorial pieces).

More in depth or higher class pieces that are not expected to be widely
consumed may well then go a step further and assume the reader has detailed
knowledge of name systems (for example Chinese "Family Name, Given Name"
ordering).

So to reiterate the expression of one of the parent posts they appear to be
writing to their audience. Be offended or confused if you like.

------
adamdecaf
That, and them passing bills allowing same-sex unions makes me want to move
there. Nice job Iceland!

~~~
lenni
Many countries have same-sex unions/partnerships and some even proper marriage
but Iceland has the first openly gay head of state.

~~~
avar
Many have some sort of same-sex unions, what Iceland did recently is eliminate
all occurrences of "man and a woman" and replace them with "two persons" in
their laws.

Most countries that have same sex unions have a different set of laws for
them, usually for religious and political reasons. The Church of Iceland
opposed the recent change, but it lost that battle.

Regarding Jóhanna, it's sad that the first openly gay head of state is also so
openly incompetent :)

~~~
sh1mmer
_Regarding Jóhanna, it's sad that the first openly gay head of state is also
so openly incompetent :)_

Care to elaborate?

~~~
avar
First of all, under normal circumstances she never would have been anywhere
close to being prime minister. The only reason (seemingly) that she got the
job was that after the collapse of the previous government the new leftist
coalition needed someone to pass the buck to, and she was pretty much the only
uncontroversial figure they had.

Her coalition government's only redeeming quality has been to suck less than
their predecessors which facilitated the giant ponzi scheme which took down
the economy. They're wasting a lot of effort on the equivalent of rearranging
the deck chairs on the Titanic.

One shining moment of incompetence was the press conference right after the
president announced that the Icesave debt repayment bill would go to a public
referendum.

She announced (well, mumbled actually) that the government was "disappointed"
in the President's decision to bring the matter to a vote in a rushed
international press conference hours after the announcement.

What they should have done is explain calmly that this was part of the
democratic process in Iceland, and how the result might affect any future debt
repayment.

Examples like these and countless others have shown that her and her
government can't think two steps ahead, manage PR and foreign diplomacy
horribly, and generally seem more interested in their pet leftist issues
(which they can finally shove through, now that they're in power) rather than
solving the problems facing the nation.

But what do I care, I moved abroad shortly after this all went down.

~~~
mbotta
right, so previous icelandic governments brought down the country by dancing
to the tunes of the banks, but it's the current government that is incompetent
and only shoves through its pet leftist issues.

how unbiased. leaves me wondering if those previous governments had any pet
rightist issues of their own. something to do with banks, do you think?
bringing down the entire economic system, perhaps?

pet leftist issues don't sound so bad after all. i should look up which they
are. i might even like them.

~~~
avar
Perhaps you missed the part where I indicated that they were better than the
previous government. They're just still a disappointment.

It's not like I'm some bitter right winger either, my views align more closely
with theirs in theory. But in practice they're about the worst thing that
could have happened after the crisis, sans the incumbents.

They've failed to enact any meaningful change to financial regulation or
government oversight since they took power. They've failed to implement the
government transparency that was widely demanded of them (e.g. doing secretive
dealings with the IMF). The issue of changing the constitution is now dead in
some committee.

As an example of something that's (still) being done right check out the
election of the Best Party in Reykjavík. Their agenda (here in Icelandic:
[http://www.bestiflokkurinn.is/ur-starfi-
flokksins/samstarfsy...](http://www.bestiflokkurinn.is/ur-starfi-
flokksins/samstarfsyfirlysing-besta-flokksins-og-samfylkingarinnar)) includes
things that are actually relevant to improving short- and long term life for
the population. They've set up an instance of a "shadow government" at
<http://betrireykjavik.is> (running <http://github.com/rbjarnason/open-direct-
democracy>), a fair amount of their policies are being drawn from there. So
they're actually listening to their constituency.

~~~
mbotta
missed that part indeed - i apologise.

google translate helped me make sense of the pages you link to. do i
understand correctly that they run the Reykjavik council? sounds like a down-
to-earth party representing the interests of the people more than those of the
corporations. unusual, that.

also, i like how they use open direct democracy. i wish there were more
reporting about this.

all in all, this sounds a little like reverse disaster capitalism: seize the
crisis to install laws that benefit the people. disaster socialism? ;)

------
jcl
Maybe a bigger issue: What will it mean for file sharers? A private, anonymous
server that can't be shut down by foreign powers sounds like a file sharer's
dream come true.

~~~
Rod
Didn't they try that in Sealand?

<http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.07/haven.html>

Apparently it didn't work all that well.

~~~
Groxx
I thought part of the problem there is that, while they _declared_ themselves
independent, nobody would recognize their independence, thus they were still
effectively under the laws of the area they were in.

If _Iceland_ , an already-recognized nation, decides to do this, trying to get
things shut down without their consent could / would be seen as an attack, and
it becomes a _far_ larger issue than simply enforcing laws within your
jurisdiction.

~~~
Rod
Iceland may be a sovereign nation, but it has no armed forces. It's fair to
say that its defense consists of its alliance with NATO, i.e., with the U.S.,
which implies that if the U.S. says "jump!", Iceland will ask "how high?".
Considering that the U.S. government is owned by interest groups, I don't see
how Iceland can become a data-haven.

~~~
mvalle
I doubt the US will ever invade Iceland. It will have massive consequences for
the US government, it might be controlled by interest groups, but they are not
all powerful, the people still do have a say.

It will be much more difficult to convince a Kentucky farmer that the US
should invade Iceland with it's white Christians, as supposed a strange-
sounding nation with non-white non-Christians(sad, but true).

And though Iceland doesn't have a military, it does have friends who do. It is
interesting entertaining the idea of a US invasion of Iceland. It would result
in an immediate hostility towards the US from many nations, as it would be to
attack a friend(if they attack Iceland, they can attack us), especially from
the Nordic region(whose commercial powers are not to sneeze at).

Anyways, data safe-heaven, great idea.

~~~
Rod
(sigh)

Dude, seriously... who's talking about invading Iceland? Are you out of your
mind? I never even suggested that!!!

Did the MPAA / RIAA mafia need the U.S. military to invade Sweden to shut down
The Pirate Bay's servers a few years ago? That's right, they didn't. They
merely contacted their obedient, corrupted "friends" in Washington D.C., and
had the U.S. government pressure the Swedish government, and the Swedish
government had the Swedish police raiding The Pirate Bay... even though
Stockholm is way out of U.S. jurisdiction.

Sweden has professional armed forces, defense and high-tech industries,
natural resources, land. Sweden needs the U.S. less than Iceland does. This
means that the U.S. can pressure Iceland whenever it wants, and Iceland will
obey because the small and the weak don't make the rules. International
relations are, essentially, bullying. It sucks, but being in denial won't
help.

~~~
itistoday
_> Dude, seriously... who's talking about invading Iceland? Are you out of
your mind? I never even suggested that!!!_

You really don't see how your words could have been interpreted that way?

~~~
Rod
No, I really, really don't see how my words could have been misinterpreted
like that. I made it clear that, as Iceland depends too much on the U.S., it
has no leverage and, thus, will be an obedient lackey whenever the boss tells
it what to do.

