http://ow.ly/16CtF
"a Switzerland of bits."
[excerpt]
On Tuesday, the Icelandic parliament is expected to introduce a measure
aimed at making the country an international center for investigative
journalism publishing, by passing the strongest combination of source
protection, freedom of speech, and libel-tourism prevention laws in the
world.
Supporters of the proposal say the move would make Iceland an "offshore
publishing center" for free speech, analogous to the offshore financial
havens that allow corporations to hide capital from authorities. Could
global news organizations with a home office in Reykjavík soon be as
common as Delaware corporations or Cayman Islands assets?
"This is a legislative package to create a haven for freedom of
expression," Icelandic member of parliament Birgitta Jónsdóttir confirmed
to me, saying that a proposal for comprehensive media law reform will be
filed in parliament on Tuesday, and that whistle-blowing specialists
Wikileaks has been involved in drafting it. There have been persistent
hints of an Icelandic media move in recent weeks, including tweets from
Wikileaks and a cryptic message from the newly created @icelandmedia
Twitter account.
The text of the proposal, called the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative, is
not yet public, but the most detailed evidence comes from a video of a
talk by Julian Assange and Daniel Schmitt of Wikileaks, given at the Chaos
Communications Congress hacker conference in Berlin on Dec. 27:
We could just say we're taking the source protection laws from Sweden, for
example…we could take the First Amendment from the United States, we could
take Belgian protection laws for journalists, and we could all pack these
together in one bundle, and make it fit for the first jurisdiction that
offers the necessities of an information society.
[...]
