"A Non-Profit Civil Liberties Organisation"
PLEA FOR ASSISTANCE TO HELP PROTECT ANONYMOUS POLITICAL DISCOURSE ON THE INTERNET
MIRROR WEB PAGE BANNED IN CANADA
18 MAY 1997
PLEASE REDISTRIBUTE THIS DOCUMENT WIDELY WITH THIS BANNER INTACT REDISTRIBUTE ONLY IN APPROPRIATE PLACES & ONLY UNTIL 1 JULY 1997
BACKGROUND
The Canadian government is enforcing a law that prohibits "political advertisements", including web pages, if they fail to identify the author or sponsor. (A political advertisement is defined in law to include anything that directly endorses or criticizes a particular candidate or political party.) The government is serious about this and has threatened to charge an individual. Rather than go to jail, this person took his web page offline.
http://www.achilles.net/~kebera/anon/vote-green.html
Electronic Frontier Canada will be taking this fight to court and the issue will surely reach the Supreme Court of Canada, but it will take several months before anything significant happens.
http://www.efc.ca/pages/elections/
In the mean time, there is a sense of urgency and a need to *do something* right away. There is an immediate need to promote debate among the general Canadian public about the merits of anonymous telecommunication and the infeasibility of Net censorship. The best way to get this discussion rolling is to create mirror sites of the controversial web page (the more the better) so that Canadians will start asking themselves, "Why do so many people think this is an important issue?"
It is important for you to recognize that this web page is not libellous, is not mean-spirited, is not pornography, is not hate propaganda. The sole reason it is ILLEGAL in Canada is because it is anonymous.
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WHAT YOU CAN DO
1. Create a "mirror site" by copying the web page now available at:
http://www.jimcarroll.com/green.htm
2. Notify ELECTRONIC FRONTIER CANADA (efc@efc.ca) of your mirror site and include the following information:
a. URL of your mirror site b. Geographic Location of the mirror site computer: (City, Country) c. Name of the person responsible for creating mirror site: d. Email address: e. Postal Mail Address: f. Daytime Phone: g. Fax:
It is particularly important that we *maximize* the number of distinct countries in which mirror sites are created.
-- an anonymous Canadian --
Mr Yaman Akdeniz
E-mail: lawya@leeds.ac.uk
Fax: 44 - (0)113 -2335056
Centre For Criminal Justice Studies,
University of Leeds,
Leeds LS2 9JT, UK