Icelandic Modern Media Initiative

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The Icelandic Modern Media Initiative (German: Icelandic initiative for modern media ) is a package of laws in Iceland that aims to create favorable legal conditions for investigative journalism and freedom of the press in the digital age and takes media laws from other European countries and the USA as a model. The initiative is supported by the International Modern Media Institute ( IMMI ).

Emergence

The spark came from, among other things, the WikiLeaks disclosure platform , which gained great prominence on the island through revelations about the Icelandic banking crisis in 2009. The background was the experience of Icelanders in dealing with WikiLeaks in their banks. Wikileaks released secret documents from Kaupthing Bank , whereupon the bank threatened to go to court. As a result, a new public formed in favor of whistleblowing and freedom of information on the Internet. The Icelanders remembered that the Wikileaks publication made the mismanagement in the Icelandic banks even better known. You dealt intensively with the legal systems that existed worldwide to protect online media .

A group within the Icelandic parliament , in collaboration with Julian Assange , Kristinn Hrafnsson , Daniel Domscheit-Berg , Jacob Appelbaum and other WikiLeaks staff, developed initial proposals, which were presented to the public in early 2010. The IMMI was supported by MPs from all parties represented in the Icelandic parliament. 19 out of a total of 63 members of parliament were among the first to support the proposal. With the approval of Parliament in June 2010, the implementation of these proposals into law could begin.

Among the proposals is also an "ultra-modern" Freedom of Information Act, which is based on the requirements of the Council of Europe and the Organization of American States (OAS) and elements of the information laws in Estonia, Scotland, the United Kingdom (UK) and Norway as well Aarhus Convention contains.

In April 2011 the first of a total of thirteen media laws was passed. It was planned to finalize the legislative package by mid-2012, whereby guidelines of the European Union had to be observed, as Iceland had been in accession negotiations since July 2010 . In this context, the European Parliament was positive about the new media legislation .

content

A new media regime is to be adopted that particularly protects investigative online journalism . The IMMI proposal includes several points:

First of all, extensive protection of whistleblowing activities is to be introduced, provided that they publish important information in the public interest. Journalistic sources should also be protected from judicial access; Here, the current Icelandic law deviates from the requirements of the European Convention on Human Rights in particular . Communication between journalists and their sources as well as internal communication in the editorial offices will in future be more protected in Iceland. However, the Icelandic data retention law still contradicts this intention. Models for the upcoming Icelandic legislation are the False Claims Act and the Military Whistleblower Protection Act from the United States Code of the United States.

Journalists are also to be protected from Libel Tourism , in particular from attempts to bring costly defamation proceedings before restrictive, such as British courts. Corresponding decisions from Great Britain are no longer to be enforced if they violate the Icelandic constitutional protection of freedom of expression.

The rules governing the liability of Internet service providers are also to be changed , particularly with regard to immunity for access and host providers ; In the future, providers as pure data carriers should enjoy protection from legal action by rights holders.

The case law of the European Court of Human Rights is viewed critically . The critics accuse the Court of justifying an “outdated” case law on online archives. According to this, British courts should be allowed to ban the publication of materials in online archives even years later; an archived article is considered to be newly published when it is accessed by the Internet user .

Based on the so-called anti- SLAPP legislation in California , procedural safeguards against injunctions are provided, which are viewed as an undermining of freedom of expression. Accordingly, it should be forbidden to plaintiffs to prevent the publication of critical articles by means of temporary injunctions.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Time online on May 3, 2011: Iceland's data free port as a model for Europe. Retrieved May 10, 2011 .
  2. ↑ Marcel Rosenbach , Holger Stark : Public enemy WikiLeaks. How a group of net activists challenge the most powerful nations in the world. Pp. 114-116 . Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt , Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-421-04518-8 .
  3. ↑ Bild.de on December 9, 2010: Is this Icelander controlling the cyber war? Retrieved January 2, 2011 .
  4. ↑ Golem.de of November 13, 2010: Wikileaks founds a company in Iceland. Retrieved January 2, 2011 .
  5. ↑ BBC News of February 12, 2010: Wikileaks and Iceland MPs propose 'journalism haven'. Retrieved January 1, 2011 .
  6. ↑ On The Media of February 19, 2010: All Journalists Go To Heaven. Interview with Julian Assange. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on February 27, 2011 ; Retrieved January 1, 2011 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.onthemedia.org
  7. ↑ a b c d e Netzpolitik.org on April 29, 2011: EUMMI: What the EU can learn from Iceland. Retrieved May 10, 2011 .
  8. ↑ Resolution of the European Parliament of 7 April 2011 on the 2010 progress report on Iceland; Section “Political Criteria”. Retrieved May 27, 2011 .