Council of Europe on 'right to reply for online media'

Just heard about this. Copy of full news article below.
Please excuse the crosspost, it's more re Web annotations I guess,
but www-rdf-interest likely to find this interesting too. Has anyone 
more info, or followed the discussions in detail?

It seems to me that annotational approaches (including things like 
weblog trackbacks) might be a way to make such a mechanism deployable.
Though even then I'm skeptical (eg. given the rise of blog
comment/trackback spam). How could such a system be sure comments were
from the critiqued party, rather than from spammers?  

http://www.coe.int/T/E/Human_Rights/media/ seems to have the background
story, as well as a trailer for something else that's looming: 
"A decision on another text prepared by the Steering Committee on the
Mass Media, the draft Declaration on freedom of expression and
information in the media in the context of the fight against terrorism,
was postponed until January 2005".

Dan

>From http://press.coe.int/cp/2004/642a(2004).htm [[

 Council of Europe promotes the right to reply for online media

Strasbourg, 17.12.2004 – The Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers
has adopted a Recommendation on the right to reply in the new media
environment.

The Recommendation urges member states to extend the right to reply –
which until now applied to the written press, radio and television – to
online communication services providing information edited in a
journalistic manner.

The right to reply is a particularly appropriate remedy in the online
environment, as contested information can be instantly corrected and
replies from those concerned can easily be attached.

The Recommendation specifically states that if contested information
remains available to the public, and if a right to reply has been
granted, a link should be established between the two items in order to
draw users’ attention to the fact that the information has triggered a
response.

N.B. The drafting of the Recommendation by the Steering Committee on the
Mass Media was the subject of a widespread public consultation process,
which took place via the Council of Europe website. A large number of
observations were duly taken into account.

The full text of the Recommendation can be found at the following
address :
http://www.coe.int/T/E/Com/press/News/2004/rec(2004)16.asp
]]

Received on Thursday, 30 December 2004 16:39:53 UTC