Re: The Economist and e-Archiving

[David Goodman <dgoodman@princeton.edu>]

This is the sort of censorship that will be most difficult to prevent. It
will not bean isolated case; though some legal systems are more ready than
others to issue such injunctions, many consider that preventing further
dissemination is sometimes appropriate response to libel.  Frankly, I
cannot think of an acceptable solution under current licensing and
legislation.  This implies to be that we will need one or more of the
following:
 
1. The existence of mirror sites that have received irrevocable access, on
a dispersed international basis, some of which will ignore the removal
instructions of any particular jurisdiction. I recognize that publishers
might not consider it legally possible to give such a license.

2. The existence of possibly less-than-legal mirrors in some countries
where this is safe. I think any publisher might reasonably regard such
mirrors as illegal downloads.

3. The continued survival in paper form of all significant publications,
on the assumption that they will be internationally dispersed and not
subject to possible national physical censorship.

4. The existence of archiving organizations that will make paper or
similar copies of the entire content. Here again, I think any publisher
might reasonably regard such complete copies as illegal downloads.

My conclusion is that I see no formal legal way of protecting
electronic-only publication from government-ordered destruction. For all
material available in paper we may need to rely on #3--conventional paper.
I am quite dissatisfied with this conclusion, but I see no way to avoid
it.

That leaves publishers who may decide not to produce anything but
electronic copies.  Are we in a position of having to rely on illegal
downloads? I am even more dissatisfied with this.

Ann Okerson wrote:

> Readers of this list may be interested in another example of withdrawal
> from an e-archive, from the June 7th issue of The Economist, p. 67:
> 
> ***
> 
> In LARGE BOLD letters occuping about the bottom 1/4 of the page:
> 
> "In a judgment dated May 23rd 2003, the section of the criminal court of
> Paris dealing with media condemned Mr Emmott, editor-in-chief of a weekly,
> The Economist, for having defamed publicly Credit Lyonnais and its
> chairman, Monsiur Peyrelevade, by publishing, in the edition of May
> 19th-25th 2001, an article on pages 82 and 83 entitled "The scandal
> continues" and a cover line "Credit Lyonnais, new revelations", which
> implicated the bank and M. Peyrelevade."
> 
> Then, in a very small font at the bottom of the page:
> 
> "Editors note:  This statement is published by order of the French court.
> Mr. Peyrelevade brought two writs for defamation against me: the first,
> for two articles on January 13th 2001, "A new scandal at Credit Lyonnais"
> and "The curse continues," was rejected.  The above verdict, for our third
> article, also awarded damages of Euro-3,000 ($3384) to each of Mr.
> Peyrelevade and Credit Lyonnais, and Euro-1,500 in costs.  In view of the
> ruling, the article "The scandal continues" has been removed from our
> online archive.  The first two articles remain there, as do a fourth
> article, "Management by committee" (July 14th 2001) and a fifth,
> "Questions, questions" (July 13th 2002), in respect of which Mr.
> Peyrelevade has not sued."