[New-imc] Kamloops Moving Forward

[Deja]

Hello all,

IMC Kamloops held a meeting tonight to decide how to proceed in light of 
recent events. Three proposals were put forward to resolve the impasse.

1. Change the EP to read 'remove' as opposed to 'delete'. Rejected 
because of the danger that the collective would take the decision too 
lightly and place posts in the 'not on the web' folder or on disk too 
casually if it is precieved as a reversable decision. This would 
potentially lead to much more censorship than the proposed model.

2. Change the policy temporarily and change it back once we have 
approval. Rejected as unethical and very much lacking in integrity.

3. Reject Indymedia and go it on our own. Rejected simply because the 
collective wants to be a part of the IMC and feel that there is no valid 
reason why it shouldn't be.

4. Find another sponsor who understands our position better. Not really 
rejected, but who wants to take on this mess? If anyone would like to 
step forward and 'officially' sponsor IMC Kamloops, we'd happily take it :)

5. Have Deja sponsor the application as is. This was the final 
consensus. The application has been defacto sponsored by many members of 
new-imc, but it is understandable that they would be reluctant to 
actually step forward at this point. Deja (me) has been the new-imc 
mentor/contact person for Canadian applicants for the better part of 
three years and understands the Canadian context (legally and socially) 
better than anyone else on the new-imc list.

The members overwhelmingly and definaltly support the application as is. 
It was the view of the collective that the previous sponsor never 
understood what the contraversial section is all about. So I will 
clarify again:

This is a section designed to create accountability. It is a last resort 
clause. This means that only after all legal, diplomatic, technological 
and negotiated compromise solutions have been exhausted. Once we have 
exhausted those, and only then, we have an accountable system in place 
for the deletion of articles from our server. We consider it much more 
frightening that there are so many IMC's that have no accountability 
clause like this, or have policys that are so vague that almost any 
member of thier collective could delete an article without reporting to 
anyone or only to a workgroup of techs or editors.

An explaination of why each clause is there:

* Pornography and sexist/abuse posts : Every IMC has come accross a situation like this. Often this materiel is illegal to even posses (child porn) making removal from publication a non-option. This is also to protect us from porn sites using IMC pages as mirrors for videos or pictures on other sites.

* Racist, anti-semitic, anti-islamic and other 'hate speech' posts : Hate speech is illegal in Canada. I have personally talked to the BC Cilvil Libertys Assosiation about just this issue. They said that they agreed with our viewpoint on this issue and would give us legal support for a case like this, but that in some cases we would have no chance of winning and to be prepared for that reality (thus the policy).

* Libel, slander, defamation and abusive personal attacks : This is also represents a point of litigation where we could easily loose a court case.

* Death threats and threats of violence : Also illegal if personal or specific in anyway. This is a touchy area where we could actually be found liable if someone was murdered or injured by someone who it was show had taken thier instruction or encouragement on our site. 

* Bombmaking instructions and similar paramilitary information : Interestingly we took our lead here from the Netherlands IMC case. They lost the case and were forced to remove the materiel from thier site, so there is, in fact, a precident here.

* Posts by fascist and Nazi organizations and individuals : This is one again in referral to Canada's strict hate speech laws. 

* Commercial advertising : This is common network practice. To leave it hidden just leads to bandwidth costs as the clever business just links to the image or file in the hidden article and we pay the bandwidth for thier media uploads.  

* Anything fraudulently posted as IMC Kamloops : This is also common practice within the network for obvious reasons.

* Misinformation intended to disrupt activist actions and discussions
(i.e. false information regarding an event, with the intent to disrupt the event) : This clause has been explained in detail before. The goal here is to protect activists from misinformation campaigns. It can also be interpreted as a way to allow us to remove incriminating evidence ( eg. pictures of an activist engaging in an action of civil disobedience that is clearly illegal and they would like us to delete them in accordance with respecting the rights of activists to not be photographed etc.)

* Posts where IMC Kamloops has received a 'cease and desist´ letter from an attorney : Yes, this is a catch all for unforseen circumstances. Obviously it would not be a last resort to just run to the admin and delete the article in question. The last resort comes one the court has issued a court order demanding that the materiel be taken down. 

Obviously in most of the cases above we would copy the to disk (technological option) and await the results of the trial. I should note here that this 'deletes' the original article, it cannot be put back with the same timestamp etc. if we win. If we loose it may have to go forever.

Is this clear? If there is any confusion remaining I will happily answer all questions regarding this policy. Throw a fictional circumstance at me and I'll explain what response this policy would create if you feel like it.


In solidarity,
Deja 

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