Fergie's Tech Blog

Greek Blogger Arrested on Eve of IGF in Athens

Kieren McCarthy writes:

The Internet Governance Forum will start on Monday morning but already the debate has started - and it is surrounding freedom of speech online.

There are several reports that the Greek authorities arrested a man for linking - not writing, but linking - to blog posts that had satirised a businessman (possibly a TV evangelist). The businessman complained to the police and the police picked up the adminstrator of blog aggregation site blogme.gr - and charged him.

Update: The man arrested was Antonis Tsipropoulos and the target of the satire was Dimosthenis Liakopoulos - a controversial Greek tele-evangelist. The satire site that mocks Mr Liakopoulos can be found at funel.blogspot.com, but since it is hosted in the US, neither the Greek authorities nor even Mr Liakopoulos can get at it.

What Mr Tsipropoulos has been charged with, god only knows. But this is a spectactular own goal by the Greek authorites on the eve of the IGF. Particularly since making a crime of linking to someone else’s content is pure, and legally foolhardy, censorship.

It’s all over the Greek blogosphere, but I can’t understand the majority of it. Except for the fact that there appears to be movement building to protest outside the conference hotel as a statement against the arrest.

posted by Fergie @ 10/28/2006 02:46:00 PM