Indy Media hit with censor lawsuit.

[Valkyrie]

German Company takes Indymedia.NL to Court

Netherlands Indymedia stands in court to face a lawsuit brought by German railway company Deutsche Bahn. Deutsche Bahn demands that Indymedia delete an archive page with links to sites that link through to two notorious articles on blocking nuclear transports. The articles give instructions in German on how to sabotage nuclear rail transports and were published in the 90s in German magazine Radikal. The links Deutsche Bahn wants to see removed from Indymedia.NL are part of reactions to an article on a previous lawsuit by the same company. It then forced internet provider XS4ALL to take down the original Radikal site, because it included the two articles which according to Deutsche Bahn "damaged their interests." In an attempt to limit traffic to the many mirror sites of the Radikal site that sprung up after the XS4ALL case, Deutsche Bahn is now targeting hyperlinks to these mirrors, because it knows it will not be able to remove the articles from the internet.
In the court hearing of June 4, Indymedia.NL argued that linking to sites outside its domain and server does not damage the business of Deutsche Bahn, let alone publishing links that are three clicks away from the 'damaging' content and require knowledge of the articles' whereabouts. The use of links is a basic principle of the internet and prohibiting them would lead to complete censorship of the internet community.

Verdict will be given June 20. Financial support to Indymedia.NL is very welcome.

More info and updates on IMC Netherlands

[bleed3r]

Eh... Cross your fingers and hope this doesn't blow over...

[Kez]

fuckin shit.
This is a great source of media we have to protect, it is one of the few places we will recieve good light

What can we do?

[Anonymous]

indy media is awsome. this is terrible. the truth being blocked as usual

(Edited by kill The Capitalists at 11:30 am on June 14, 2002)

[Kez]

i concur,
this i believe is a reason to use the media

If we can use teh traditonal media we can do more convincing, and the more views who wanna here our views, the more airtime we can get, and so a sycle develops

comrade kamo

[hobo]

Yeah the problem there is the traditional media is oppossed to what indymedia and ourselves represent. It would be virtually impossible to create attension for the protection of free speech on indymedias behalf or for any other cause through traditional media. Look at the situation in britain, our goverments policy on the euro is decided by ruppert murdoch

[Kez]

but think on...

IF murdoch (the cancerous **** he is) believces that he will sell more scum papers if they are filled with commie shit, then he will fill them with commie shit wont he?

Comrade Kamo

[Valkyrie]

Actually, the situation is much worse yet. There was put into effect a couple years ago, a three-year moratorium on taxing the use of the internet. When that is up, it is believed they are going to try to do this. They are in favor of taxing every email, every minute of internet use as if it were a long-distance telephone call. We need to fight against that. There was an on-line petition against it, but it seems to be down, or gone at the moment. I will check to see if there is another one somewhere.

[Lefty]

grrr...more suppressed free speech!

[RedCeltic]

Yes Paris Please provide a link to that on-line petition when you can. This is the kind of crap we need to fight aganst if we are to get our message out!