[BBC News] Wikileaks and Iceland MPs propose 'journalism haven'

[Vation]

Wikileaks has provoked the dream of Iceland becoming a haven for whistle-blowing

Iceland could become a "journalism haven" if a proposal put forward by some Icelandic MPs aided by whistle-blowing website Wikileaks succeeds.

The Icelandic Modern Media Initiative (IMMI), calls on the country's government to adopt laws protecting journalists and their sources.

It will be filed with the Althingi - Iceland's parliament - on 16 February.

If the proposal succeeds it will require the Icelandic government to consider introducing legislation.

Julian Assange, Wikileaks' editor, told BBC News that the idea was to "try and reform Iceland's media law to be a very attractive jurisdiction for investigative journalists".

Source and further reading:
BBC News - Wikileaks and Iceland MPs propose 'journalism haven'

[SealLion]

ya, I'll be glad to see Wikileaks go back on line once they're finished raising thier funds. Wikileaks is known far and wide for providing pretty decent and exposed articles on corporate and governmental coruption.

[slikrapid]

well, there are a few problems here:

first, the centralization of investigative journalism is probably not a good thing ( interestingly, just as the centralization of p2p is also to be avoided), because you may expect a large influx of journalists at a relatively confined area/space, making them vulnerable to surveillance (in buildings or via internet), counter-intelligence, inquiries originating from this area will be easily identifiable, physical/terrorist attacks, they would be subjects to just one law (their adversaries would have an easy task of finding holes in it for their advantage), iceland is an EU candidate (when they enter EU an almost completely different set of rules & legislation will apply to them)

related to this, it may create an excuse for other countries to maybe even increase their censorship levels (on one side it reduces government & co. fears of honorable journalists as they may even be forced to leave for iceland in order to enjoy investigative freedoms, on the other side that leaves more obedient journalists to feed the masses at home, creating non-critical or misleading conclusions in the majority of media consumers), also it may more easily identify leakers if they need to submit their material through already known/monitored channels/endpoints

so imo, a better solution is to have investigative journalists all over the globe, working to improve their own countries and the world in general, pushing for less censorship & widening freedoms/liberties for the citizens

as a side note, the iceland project can/should be set in motion to see how it works out - if it yields good results it can be used to improve laws in other countries, but not to create an 'exodus' of journalists towards iceland

come to think about it, something similar could be done regarding torrent trackers (hosting & seedboxes), but with similar dangers of centralization, i guess the 'safe haven' principle is a 'double edged sword'

[SealLion]

well that;'s an interesting point you've made slik. I think I see your point with respect to the centralization issue and the dangers that it poses for journalism.

If memory serves me correct, unless things have changed, I think that Wikileaks does have a sort of branch system in place for all their offices. I recall when the German Branch of Wikileaks closed after it was investigated for a bunch of nonsense and was subsequently shut down.

Interestingly though, despite the german branch of the Wikileaks server closing, the rest of Wikileaks remained open.

I think that's what happened. But I do recall something like that.