{"id":384,"date":"2007-03-05T13:04:40","date_gmt":"2007-03-05T03:04:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/?p=384"},"modified":"2013-03-19T19:28:56","modified_gmt":"2013-03-19T08:28:56","slug":"anti-mining-website-shut-down-by-mining-lobby-complaints","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/?p=384","title":{"rendered":"Anti-mining website shut down by mining lobby complaints"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"image:<\/a><\/div>\n
image: Rising Tide Australia
\n<\/font><\/em><\/a><\/div>\n

Rising Tide<\/a> is a Newcastle based public interest group committed to informing the public about the real costs of coal in terms of carbon emissions and global warming.<\/p>\n

Rising Tide spoofed the NSW Minerals Council website at http:\/\/www.nswmining.com.au\/ <\/a>with their own site at http:\/\/www.miningnsw.com.au\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Rising Tide initially used edited screengrabs of the mining lobby’s website for their spoof – straight bit of culture jam, much as you often<\/a> see<\/a> here<\/a> on<\/a> mgk<\/a>. The NSW Minerals Council complained to Rising Tide’s host about ‘copyright violations,’ and their host turned off Rising Tide’s jam site. Rising Tide rebuilt the site using their own artwork and were pulled off by their host yet again<\/em> on complaints from the mining lobby. Rising Tide lodged a counterclaim<\/a>; their site is back online via a host in Germany pending a result of the ‘investigation.’<\/p>\n

Australia does not have adequate ‘fair use’ exemptions in copyright law nor has a Bill of Rights protecting freedom of speech, limiting civil lawsuits alleging a private citizen or corporation has violated the civil rights of a protester or satirist. Australia neither has any laws prohibiting SLAPP lawsuits, like the McLibel case. Anyone who hosts political satire, critique, commentary or even organises a boycott by way of an Australian based website, beware. Your site could go *poof* really rather easily at no small cost, even if that’s the time required to repost the site on a new hosting service.<\/p>\n

While one doesn’t get a grant of American constitutional free speech rights just because their website is hosted in the USA, nor are US webhosts obligated to protect constitutional free speech rights, reputable American webhosts (and there’s quite a few who ain’t<\/em>… bigger hosts are often better on this issue) are on balance much more resistant to content complaints, particularly the frivolous, politically motivated and vindictive varieties.<\/p>\n

However, this can go to the extreme of total disclaiming of responsibility for user-generated content, as in the case of Google\/Blogger protecting false and specifically defamatory material posted by neo-nazis<\/a> and blogs maintained by paedophilia advocates. Google will NOT remove user generated content, despite the terms of their TOS<\/a>, unless ordered to do so by a court which has legal jurisdiction over Google Inc.<\/p>\n

Until Australia becomes a republic with a constitutional Bill of Rights and adopts reasonable protection of ‘fair use’ citatations for journalistic or political commentary or critique, small publishers of political opinion are well advised to host offshore.<\/p>\n

Mind you, it was the news item on the SMH<\/a> regarding the NSW Minerals Council’s complaints prompting the shutdown of Rising Tide’s jam website which drew my attention to the matter. Rising Tide definitely should send a thank-you note to the NSW Minerals Council for the massive publicity. Bottle of carbon-free wine or something.<\/p>\n

-weez<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

image: Rising Tide Australia Rising Tide is a Newcastle based public interest group committed to informing the public about the real costs of coal in terms of carbon emissions and global warming. Rising Tide spoofed the NSW Minerals Council website at http:\/\/www.nswmining.com.au\/ with their own site at http:\/\/www.miningnsw.com.au\/. Rising Tide initially used edited screengrabs of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=384"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":864,"href":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384\/revisions\/864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}