The full Jullian Assange extradition judgement can be found here: http://www.judiciary.gov.uk/Resources/JCO/Documents/Judgments/jud-aut-sweden-v-assange-judgment.pdf.
In fact as I am satisfied that extradition is compatible with the defendant’s Convention rights, I must order that Mr Assange be extradited to Sweden.
Assange has seven days to appeal the decision.
I was shopping online for flowers and found a nice bouquet that I wanted to buy as a present. I entered my personal details, filled in my credit card number and made my way to the checkout page. There I saw that $ 15 was added just for delivery. It was the first time that these extra costs were mentioned. I firmly closed the browser window as I felt sure that I could get a better price at another online flower shop.
Dear Customer,
We were so sorry to see you leave our site a few minutes ago. If you come back now we will be waiving the $14.99 Service Fee on any order that you place! From You Flowers offers Same Day Delivery anywhere in the US when your order is placed before 3pm in the recipient’s time zone!
I didn’t do a full search for other webshops yet, so I went back and confirmed my earlier order. $ 15 dollars off, that’s a good deal! Without realizing it, I had negotiated with a computer system.
There probably is a system in place that contacts customers that leave in the final stages of the checkout process. I am not good at bargaining in shops – I am a coward – but by showing the computer system that I was in doubt, I bargained without knowing it. The system of course didn’t recognize my emotional state of indecision, it was simply a matter of counting down time. It made me think what other simple negotiating skills can be implemented by simple computer scripts without entering the field of computer recognition of emotions.
I was always under the impression that prices on the Internet were fixed and bargaining was something you could only do in the offline world, with real people. Now I know better. How many euros and dollars could I have saved by simply postponing the checkout process?
The topic of this post has nothing to do with the topics I usually blog about, but still I find it interesting enough to do a quick write up. It is about the Israeli West Bank barrier, which is a separation barrier being constructed by Israel.
In 2003, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) gave its advisory opinion on the lawfulness of the wall. In essence – and over-simplified – the ICJ found that the Israeli wall is in conflict with international law.
This decision had no or little impact on the situation in Israel. However, today it did impact one company in the Netherlands. The Dutch public prosecutor announced (Dutch) that it will investigate Riwal’s involvement in building the Israeli West Bank wall. Riwal is a Dutch company specialized in telescopic booms, scissor lifts and telehandlers. The public prosecutor received two complaints against Riwal and will later decide whether it will bring action against the company. It is (yet) unclear on what grounds Riwal would be prosecuted.
In a case between BP and the United States in which BP challenged the Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) classification of its merchandise, the U.S. Court of International Trade went into reliability of Wikipedia. BP had frequently referred to Wikipedia to argue that its product was petroleum oil, and not a preparation.
In a footnote (FN. 10), the court goes into the reliability of Wikipedia and states that it does not accept Wikipedia for the purposes of judicial notice.
The court notes BP’s frequent reference to the website http://wikipedia.org in its description of this process. [...] Wikipedia is a “user-contributed online encyclopedia” compiled of articles placed on “[w]eb sites that allow users to directly edit any [w]eb page on their own from their home computer.” Thomas L. Friedman, The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century [...]. Wikipedia’s construction is based on the theory that “allowing anyone who surfs along to add or delete content on that page” will result in “a credible, balanced encyclopedia by way of an ad hoc open-source, open-editing movement.” Id. Although the court is aware that some studies have led prominent scholars to promote Wikipedia’s veracity, see Yochai Benkler, The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom [...], and acknowledges that several circuit courts have relied on it in opinions, [...] countless district courts have held that “Wikipedia is not a reliable source at this level of discourse,” [...]. Based on the ability of any user to alter Wikipedia, the court is skeptical of it as a consistently reliable source of information. At this time, therefore, the court does not accept Wikipedia for the purposes of judicial notice.
For the UN and Freedom of Expression and Information Critical Perspectives Congress I wrote a paper to explore the work done by the Committee on the Rights of the Child with regard to the right to freedom of expression. The congress is organized by the ACIL (Amsterdam Center for International Law) and the Institute for Information Law (IVIR), Faculty of Law, UvA, with the collaboration of Human Rights Centre, University of Essex.
The paper can be found here: The Committee on the Rights of the Child & Freedom of Expression (Draft – not for citation or circulation). Below is a preview.
The right to freedom of expression is protected in many international and regional treaties. These treaties are applicable to children in their capacity as being part of ‘everyone’. The Convention on the Rights of the Child (hereafter: ‘the Convention’) protects the child’s right to free expression which is firmly-rooted throughout the whole of the Convention. The protection of the right to freedom of expression of children in particular can be seen as reaffirming that the general right to freedom of expression also applies to children. The main difference between provisions in many international treaties and the provisions in the Convention, is that the latter is tailored to children. This differentiation evoked a profound discussion on the formulation of the child’s right to freedom of expression. For instance, discussions on Article 17 of the Convention regarding the role of the mass media were characterized by a clash between two competing approaches. One that supported the free flow of information and one that supported a somewhat more paternalistic approach by preferring the protection of children from harmful information. However, this does not mean that the Convention provides absolutely no protection of children from harmful information. The purpose of this paper is to explore the work done by the monitoring body of the Convention, the Committee on the Rights of the Child (hereafter: ‘the Committee’), with regard to the right to freedom of expression.
EU Commissioner Neelie Kroes deals with Net neutrality in Europe. Kroes: “I will not support any outcome that puts into danger freedom of expression.”
I wrote an abstract for a paper for the Annual Student Human Rights Conference in Nottingham.
The right to freedom of expression is protected in many international and regional treaties. These treaties are applicable to children in their capacity as being part of ‘everyone’. In contrast, the Convention on the Rights of the Child (hereafter “the Convention”) protects the right to free expression of children in particular by means of Article 13 of the Convention.
The protection of the right to freedom of expression of children in particular can be seen as reaffirming that the general right to freedom of expression also applies to children. The main difference between provisions in many international treaties and the provisions in the Convention is that the latter is tailored to children. Most international treaties protect against state interference, but children require a positive obligation to be placed on the state to fully enjoy their right to freedom of expression. The Convention and the Committee on the Rights of the Child (the monitoring body of the Convention) call for such a positive obligation.
The right to freedom of expression, as enshrined in the Convention, is part of a cluster of participatory rights that are laid down in the Convention. The child’s right to freedom of expression includes the right to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds. This right is an important pre-requisite to realise participation of children. This right implies both a passive and an active approach by States Parties. On the one hand, States Parties are required to refrain from interfering with the free process of seeking, receiving and imparting information. On the other hand, States Parties are required to actively enable children to receive and impart information. Technology, and the Internet in particular, can be a tool for States Parties to enable children to fully enjoy their right to seek, receive and impart information. When the Committee on the Rights of the Child speaks of media, it primarily considers traditional media. When the Internet is mentioned by the Committee, it is primarily mentioned in the context of pornography, violence, racism or otherwise harmful content, and not as a tool to enable children to enjoy their right to freedom of expression.
The purpose of this paper is to explore the work done by the monitoring body of the Convention, the Committee on the Rights of the Child, with regard to the right to freedom of expression in relation to new technologies. On the basis of original research of Concluding Observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child, this paper explains the (so far) untapped potential of relevant Convention provisions and the use of new technology to advance the right to freedom of expression of children.
Footnotes omitted
Bits of Freedom is the Dutch renewed Digital Civil Liberties Organization. After ending its activities in 2006 due to financial difficulties, Ot van Daalen announced today that Bits of Freedom will be back. Bits of Freedom will be sponsored by the Internet4All Foundation (closely related to Dutch ISP XS4ALL).
Bits of Freedom will be headed by Ot van Daalen (former attorney at De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek). Also Doke Pelleboer (formet CEO at XS4ALL), Joris van Hoboken (researcher at the Institute for Information Law, University of Amsterdam) and Karianne Thomas (lawyer at Van Doorne) are in the board of management.
I was asked to quickly develop the new temporary website – I was happy to do so! Good Luck Bits of Freedom.
TinyURL and services alike provide Internet users with an advantageous service to shorten the URLs that they like to refer to. For instance the European Commission website on the E-Commerce Directive: ‘http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/e-commerce/directive_en.htm’ can be shortened to ‘http://tinyurl.com/uRL’. TinyURL is probably the most popular website providing shortened URLs, other providers include: shortURL, Metamark and shurl.org. Shortened URLs have proven to be very handy if one wants to refer to websites in SMS text messages or while micro-blogging on Twitter. There is a trend to also use shorter URLs in scientific publications, probably in order to have a clean body of footnotes. This blog post discusses some cons of using TinyURL and services alike in legal or scientific publications.
More and more information that could be relevant for scientific research, is being published on the Internet. One could think of reports by research institutes or governmental institutions, articles by legal scholars on SSRN, but also blogs that are maintained by law professors on which they spout their thoughts on recent developments in their field. Especially in the United States, law professors are maintaining blogs, for example in the field of information law: Lawrence Lessig, Jonathan Zittrain, Tech Law Profs etc.
It’s not a surprise that legal scholars are increasingly referring to information on the Internet, generally by noting a URL in their footnotes. Because URLs often consist of long sets of characters that are hard to identically retype for readers of a publication, writers use services like TinyURL.
A TinyURL doesn’t give a clue as to the website that you will be visiting, it doesn’t provide elements to determine the trustworthiness of a website. Judging by the domain, where would you rather pick up a virus: http://www.microsoft.com or http://tinyurl.com/dk9apc? Phishing-websites aren’t using TinyURLs without reason. It is easy to see that these practices hurt TinyURL’s reputation. Luckily, TinyURL and some similar services have now implemented a preview function that enables Internet users to preview a URL that has been shortened. See for instance: http://preview.tinyurl.com/dk9apc. Unfortunately this is just an option and has not been raised to a standard yet.
Although it is noted on TinyURL’s website that TinyURLs will never expire, it is a fact of life that companies do not always survive. A TinyURL might be working today, but it might not work tomorrow. The terms of use of TinyURL clearly indicate that “this service is provided without warranty of any kind”. By using TinyURLs in legal or scientific publications, links to references completely rely on a service of a single service provider. If TinyURL’s website is down, all your links to your references are down which may wash away your publication’s foundation. Furthermore, many professors have instructed me to always refer to primary sources. For instance, referring to actual court judgments should be preferred to referring to press releases describing court judgments. Although it can be used to link to primary sources, a TinyURL clearly isn’t a primary source itself. This might strike you as an artificial argument, but the point is that nobody knows what functions TinyURL will be implementing in the future and nobody knows what this will do to your links.
Once a TinyURL has been set up, it is impossible to change the URL that the TinyURL is linking to. A function that enables users to change the URL that the TinyURL is linking to, would be very helpful to academia. A TinyURL then becomes a variable in a static legal or scientific publication, which could turn out useful if for instance a website has moved from one URL to another. Publicists would then be able to control their links after their work has been published. For instance, a broken link could be corrected after a publication has appeared in a legal or scientific journal. Unfortunately such a function is currently lacking in TinyURL.
To put it briefly, don’t use TinyURLs or URLS by similar services in your publications!
