h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The BBC is not my ISP, I use a cable provider.
Perhaps the powers that be are benign, perhaps even benevolent (adj. well-disposed, humane, considerate,sympathetic,caring {definition from the Oxford Thesausaus!}), in refusing to let us see various URLs and sites for our own good. No doubt there may come a stage when burning books will be brought back (it seem to be so *virtually*) in our own interests.

For many years the BBC has bragged of it's independence, fairness and support of the (human) the rights of downtrodden peoples of the world.

I can't see how they can balance this view (of independence/fairness etc) with the actions they are taking on this site.

OK so I have just read the directive and clearly BBC online is covered by the definitions of information society service as a provider of hosted material. Therefore clearly article 14 absolves the BBC of any liability until it is made aware anyhting dodgy when it must act 'expeditously' to remove it and article 15 clearly states that contrary to the BBC policy there is absolutely no obligation to monitor. In fact as I believe as has been stated elsewhere the fact that the BBC is moderating and removing content without any complaints having been made is quite arguably dodgy under the terms of the directive. Perhaps TPTB might want to ask the BBC's legal dept. how they interpret this directive differently and why and then feed that back to us. At the moment it stands that the BBC have developed rules which are quite clearly against the spirit of the internet, against the spirit of free speech and freedom of information and clearly against the spirit of the European Union's directive on this matter, not to mention to put it politely using factually incorrect statements to justify them. Mind you if the BBC lawyers are as bad as they appear to be , it's no wonder they are so paranoid.

There are many types of ISP other than Dial-up providers. Think about what thoe letters mean 'I'nternet 'S'ervice 'P'rovider, this place is on the internet, it could be described as a service & its provided by the BBC. One of the many things an ISP can do is pubish information.

The situation about the bbc being a publisher or an isp is relatively simple in that case. It was made plain in the old days (pre bbc) that stuff on h2g2 was a bit like a bulitin board system, and the edited guide was likely to be the bit published. This makes the edited guide like when o'reilly publish the book "open sources". It has an online version and the book version, both generated from the same source. The online version is like an ISP, the book form is like the publisher. And the ordinary stuff on h2g2 that doesn't go into the edited guide is totally like an isp.

Look this is a side issue as under the European Directive the BBC counts as an Information Society Service Provider which hosts contributions from other people and therefore is covered by articles 14 and 15 of that directive.

Perhaps we can get bbc online's lawyers to talk to the lawyers at
http://www.freebeeb.net and http://www.bbcworldwide.com which are both bbc companies, so no need to edit out their url's.
freebeeb.net is the bbc's free isp, and presumably, if the guide survives long enough to get onto paper, that will be published by bbcworldwide.