Liability?
In a potentially disturbing decision, a german court has convicted a man because he failed to secure his wireless internet connection. Whilst he was on holiday, a fact he proved, this gentleman’s internet connection was used by some one else to download a song. The song was subsequently posted to a file sharing network.
They fined him $100 euros.
In these cases, there seems to be two possible defences. Either, ignorance or incompetence. That is to say, ‘I didn’t know’ (complete ignorance) - or - ‘I tried, but who could have foreseen my token effort would be insufficient’ (incompetence).
It hasn’t always been so, but today in Australia, politicians seem to favor the ignorance defence and pursued it to the point of ridiculous. It appears policy to maintain a minimum level of plausible deniability. A ‘best to stay ignorant lest you be found incompetent’ sort of stance. You know the kind of thing, they all fell over board but I personally was misinformed about it.
For myself I’ve never seen the massive difference between these two defences. Surely if you’re stupid enough to be misinformed there’s an obvious level of incompetence?
In this case, this guy seems to gone the incompetence route. Which didn’t go too well.
However, the result is disturbing in the following way. If people in Australia started accepting the argument that incompetence is no defence. Well, where would it all end?
There’s most of both sides of parliament swept away in a single blow. It could spell the death of politicians as we know them.
God forbid.
Carlton
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