16 June 1997
Source: Mail list Cyberia-L@listserv.aol.com
See Junger's answer to Nottinghamshire County Council: http://jya.com/junger-nott.htm
To: CYBERIA-L@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 16:32:38 GMT0BST From: "Y.AKDENIZ" <lawya@LUCS-01.NOVELL.LEEDS.AC.UK> Organization: University of Leeds Subject: New Press Release - UK Nottinghamshire CC Cyber-Rights & Cyber-Liberties (UK) http://www.leeds.ac.uk/law/pgs/yaman/yaman.htm For Immediate Release - 16 June 1997 A Call by Cyber-Rights & Cyber-Liberties (UK) to the Netizens for Linking to the JET Report and to the related Information on the Internet The WWW is the most popular way to publish and retrieve information on the Internet. `The WWW has become so popular because of its open, distributed, and easy-to-use nature'. Recent attempts by the UK Nottinghamshire County Council to stop this kind of activity for the distribution of the JET Report on the Internet seems to suggest otherwise. The UK County Council is also going after others who either have picked up the report or who are linking to it. Nottinghamshire County Council, initially has threatened legal action for copyright infringement against Jeremy Freeman, a 21-year-old Canadian student and network engineer, for creating a mirror site of the original report and for linking to Professor Peter Junger's web site in the USA. On Friday the 13th June 1997 the County Council stroke again this time they threatened Professor peter Junger with similar actions if he did not stop to provide a mirror site for the report which has been accessed 2500 times since early last week but also for the WWW links he has provided to other information related to the JET Report. Professor Junger replied to the County Council on Monday 16th of June, 1997 stating that he will not comply with their demands. As the Court in the US case of ACLU v Reno stated, the WWW links may be seen as a footnote in an article or a street name helping the online user to find more information about a subject he or she is interested into. It should also be noted that services such as WWW search engines, eg AltaVista or Yahoo would not be able to operate without the linking capability. Search engines collect and organise millions of WWW addresses(URLs) in their databases which may be searched by the online users. `Linking is encouraged on the Internet because it ties different web pages on related topics and provides an effective system for browsing in the information superhighway. There are millions of web pages on the Internet and it would be quite impossible to find anything without the use of WWW links.' Yaman Akdeniz, head of the Cyber-Rights & Cyber-Liberties (UK) group stated that `The availability of the JET Report is not like putting John Grisham's latest bestseller on the Internet and distributing it through mirror sites all around the world. The Internet community would not do such a thing. The issue in the availability of the JET Report is public interest and freedom of information. After all the genie is out of the bottle and everyone on the Internet knows about the JET Report. The central question remains as whether the JET Report had been made more widely available to social workers and police in 1990, would later cases have been handled differently or better?' Therefore, this time Cyber-Rights & Cyber-Liberties (UK) calls the online community to link their web pages to the the following web pages and notify lawya@leeds.ac.uk so that we keep an up-to-date list of all linked web sites. There are now more than 16 official mirror sites but we would encourage the online community to link their web pages to the following three web pages initially along the lines of: The original JET Report was published here http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~dlheb/jetrepor.htm You can find all the information related to the JET Report at http://www.xs4all.nl/~yaman/yaman.htm For a mirror of the JET Report see http://samsara.law.cwru.edu/comp_law/jetrep.htm> Contact Information: Mr Yaman Akdeniz Address: Centre For Criminal Justice Studies, University of Leeds, LS2 9JT. Telephone: 0113-2335033 Fax: 0113- 2335056 E-mail: lawya@leeds.ac.uk Url: http://www.leeds.ac.uk/law/pgs/yaman/yaman.htm Notes for the media: Broxtowe Case involved Britain's largest ever prosecution of multi-generational incest in which the defendants received sentences of up to ten years is being made available on the Internet in the hope that an informed readership will be able to draw its own conclusions. The version of the report published on the World Wide Web in the public interest identifies neither the victims nor the family at the centre of the Broxtowe Case. The author of this version, John Gwatkin, formerly an Area Director for Notts Social Services, approves its publication and has a written a special introduction which is also on the Web Site. Cyber-Rights & Cyber-Liberties (UK) http://www.leeds.ac.uk/law/pgs/yaman/yaman.htm Cyber-Rights & Cyber-Liberties (UK) is a non-profit civil liberties organisation founded on January 10, 1997. Its main purpose is to promote free speech and privacy on the Internet and raise public awareness of these important issues. The Web pages have been online since July 1996. Cyber-Rights & Cyber-Liberties (UK) started to become involved with national Internet-related civil liberties issues following the release of the DTI white paper on encryption in June 1996 and the Metropolitan Police action to censor around 130 newsgroups in August 1996. Cyber-Rights & Cyber-Liberties (UK) covers such important issues as the regulation of child pornography on the Internet and UK Government's encryption policy. The organisation provides up-to-date information related to free speech and privacy on the Internet. Cyber-Rights & Cyber-Liberties (UK) is a member of various action groups on the Internet and also a member of the Global Internet Liberty Campaign (see <http://www.gilc.org>) which has over 30 member organisations worldwide. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Yaman Akdeniz <lawya@leeds.ac.uk> Cyber-Rights & Cyber-Liberties (UK) at: http://www.leeds.ac.uk/law/pgs/yaman/yaman.htm ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~