Europer: The Bigger the Bureaucracy The Better

Boing Boing quotes a News.com article on the Council of Europe, an influential quasi-governmental body that drafts conventions and treaties, finalizing a proposal that will require websites to offer "equal time" for opposing views when people are criticized.

The all-but-final proposal draft says that Internet news organizations, individual Web sites, moderated mailing lists and even Web logs (or "blogs"), must offer a "right of reply" to those who have been criticized by a person or organization.

With clinical precision, the council's bureaucracy had decided exactly what would be required. Some excerpts from its proposal:

• "The reply should be made publicly available in a prominent place for a period of time (that) is at least equal to the period of time during which the contested information was publicly available, but, in any case, no less than for 24 hours."

• Hyperlinking to a reply is acceptable. "It may be considered sufficient to publish (the reply) or make available a link to it" from the spot of the original mention.

• "So long as the contested information is available online, the reply should be attached to it, for example through a clearly visible link."

• Long replies are fine. "There should be flexibility regarding the length of the reply, since there are (fewer) capacity limits for content than (there are) in off-line media."