It is good to see overview articles like this one Controlling Cyber Dissidents? discussing how blogging may be part of an emerging culture of eDemocracy.
Given the news this week of the case by so-called "McLibel two" (Ms Helen Steel and Mr David Morris) two English anti-McDonalds campaigners who had been distributing leaflets criticising McDonalds in 1984, and then were hit with a heavy lawsuit under the British libel laws, and lost. They appealed their case to the European Court of Human Rights claiming that the lack of legal funds to defend themselves meant that the libels laws were being used by large Multi-National Corporations to brow-beat anyone who disagreed with them. The Strasbourg-based court ordered Britain to pay them a total of EUR 35,000 and offer them a retrial. London has three months to appeal the decision.
Putting these two unrelated things together I see the blogsphere as a place for this type of open robust debate that is needed by the world democracy. Of course the problems arise when it used to promote racism, and so on......
Tweet Posted by mofoghlu at February 16, 2005 12:18 PM | TrackBack