Congress / administration gets one right: tourist libel law

[Double Trouble]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-10940211

This makes a lot of sense to me. Idiots in other countries or courts in other countries should not be able to stifle fee speech in the US. US courts would simply throw out libel / slander type judgments from other countries in the future.

This was a potentially dangerous loophole that allowed people to go after US authors or publishers in other countries to make use of more plaintiff-friendly laws, ie libel tourism.

:thumbsup:

Goes to show you that even though there's a sharp divide in congress by partisan lines, things that make sense can still get passed. Gridlock = good.

 

[MovingTarget]

Sometimes Congress does do something right. This should've been done years ago...

 

[Craig234]

Unusual for something to pass unanimously. It does support the point, though, that 'those foreigners don't vote', and so they're not going to get much representation in Congress.

That may be fine for this issue - but it's also true on things like when foreign countries' workers have interests conflicting with US corporations, in earlier decades.

They tend not to get any 'justice', they don't vote, they just make things like cheap fruit available to the people who do vote, and provide higher corporate profits the less they're paid. So if the choice is backing a dictator who will serve our 'interests' despite the fact he'll be keeping his own people terribly impoverished, using anything from repression, kidnapping, torture and killing against labor leaders and anyone supporting pro-worker reform, well, the people who vote have historically gotten their 'interests' represented. It's good that this has improved more recently.

 

[werepossum]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-10940211

This makes a lot of sense to me. Idiots in other countries or courts in other countries should not be able to stifle fee speech in the US. US courts would simply throw out libel / slander type judgments from other countries in the future.

This was a potentially dangerous loophole that allowed people to go after US authors or publishers in other countries to make use of more plaintiff-friendly laws, ie libel tourism.

:thumbsup:

Goes to show you that even though there's a sharp divide in congress by partisan lines, things that make sense can still get passed. Gridlock = good.

Agreed, and agreed. Good news all around.

 

[Double Trouble]

Unusual for something to pass unanimously. It does support the point, though, that 'those foreigners don't vote', and so they're not going to get much representation in Congress.

That may be fine for this issue - but it's also true on things like when foreign countries' workers have interests conflicting with US corporations, in earlier decades.

They tend not to get any 'justice', they don't vote, they just make things like cheap fruit available to the people who do vote, and provide higher corporate profits the less they're paid. So if the choice is backing a dictator who will serve our 'interests' despite the fact he'll be keeping his own people terribly impoverished, using anything from repression, kidnapping, torture and killing against labor leaders and anyone supporting pro-worker reform, well, the people who vote have historically gotten their 'interests' represented. It's good that this has improved more recently.

It's not the job of the American voter to express the best interests for people of another country. Expecting the American voter to vote against their own best interests is unreasonable. Reasonably, the best anyone should expect is that American voters make their government act in an ethical and honorable way overseas as well as at home, but even there our government has frequently failed us.

 

[1prophet]

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=123128&highlight=

Glad to see this one finally resolved, it took almost three years but better late than never.

Unusual for something to pass unanimously. It does support the point, though, that 'those foreigners don't vote', and so they're not going to get much representation in Congress.

That may be fine for this issue - but it's also true on things like when foreign countries' workers have interests conflicting with US corporations, in earlier decades.

They tend not to get any 'justice', they don't vote, they just make things like cheap fruit available to the people who do vote, and provide higher corporate profits the less they're paid. So if the choice is backing a dictator who will serve our 'interests' despite the fact he'll be keeping his own people terribly impoverished, using anything from repression, kidnapping, torture and killing against labor leaders and anyone supporting pro-worker reform, well, the people who vote have historically gotten their 'interests' represented. It's good that this has improved more recently.

This has nothing to do with that since the author was not looking to publish her book in England, the plaintiff purposely used the fact that someone purchased the books in England in order to bypass the US Constitution specifically the First Ammendment.

Mahfouz sued Ehrenfeld for libel in the High Court of Justice in London, although Ehrenfeld didn't appear or acknowledge the court's jurisdiction in the 2005 case. A default judgment requires her to declare her writings about Mahfouz to be false, publish a correction and apology, and stop further publication of the disputed statements in Britain.

In U.S. Circuit court, Ehrenfeld sought to declare the British decision unenforceable in the United States. The suit claims that Mahfouz chose to sue Ehrenfeld in England because its libel laws favor plaintiffs. Ehrenfeld's attorney said Mahfouz was engaging in a kind of "libel tourism."

Mahfouz had defended the choice of venue, saying 23 copies of the book had been purchased in England over the Internet and a chapter of the book was available from the ABCnews.com Web site.

Ehrenfeld's book said Mahfouz "and his family have provided direct and indirect monetary support to al-Qaida and other Islamist terror groups,'" according to the state court record

What is truly sad is the hundreds of billions in us dollars and many thousands of lives lost on the war in Iraq while America walks hand in hand with it's true enemy.