Fergus Cassidy

Press pass

"NEVER pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel", advised Bill Clinton in My Life, his recent autobiography. Wise words or another Clinton cliche? When it comes to setting up a press council in Ireland, most definitely the latter.

Gone is the fear as witnessed by the justice minister"s remarks last summer: "If the press, as once famously remarked, are not drinking at the last chance saloon, then they can see the neon sign flashing up ahead", he said at the launch of a pamphlet titled Rethinking Freedom of the Press.

At the same event the minister went on to say that he hoped "to make provision to recognise and confer certain statutory protections and privileges on a properly constituted press council".

Last weekend at a Law Society conference, the minister announced that he will bring in legislation establishing a press council before the end of this year. Such a press council is at the heart of the government"s efforts to reform Ireland"s defamation laws.

As a ringside spectator, albeit with good tickets, at this tilt at the ink barrelers, I"m beginning to wonder if I"m sitting at the right ring at all. That a more significant and bigger bout is taking place somewhere besides this arena.

What constitutes "the press" these days? Does it consist solely of those who buy ink by the barrel? Or those who publish and print from registered offices? That seems to be the case, judging from the discussions on the proposed press council and defamation law.

Which is all fine and dandy (or not) if the ink link back to Johannes Gutenberg remains intact.

But the idea that defamation can be effectively reformed by adherence to national borders and territorial torts is one that has been greatly weakened by the spread of the internet and the web.

We"re once again witnessing the lack of understanding of how big this interweb thing is going to get and how important it's going to be.

Sure, right now the words in ink dominate the media map while the electronic world seems to be in bits. But that could change faster than we're prepared for.

Don't take my word for it, instead try those of Lord Bingham, a former English chief justice. He wrote in 2002 that the internet's impact on the law of defamation will require "almost every concept and rule in the field... to be reconsidered in the light of this unique medium of instant worldwide communication".

The whole concept of "a free press" is changing faster than a lead story on election night. Electronic publishing via the web has opened up a new era but is in danger from old refrains.

The unprecedented ability to self-publish and distribute is struggling to get a foothold in the Fourth Estate, shoe-horned into a senile structure based on bricks and mortar.

We're too nomadic, too virtual, too complicated, too new to be given the protections afforded to the ink barrel buyers.

When was the last time a newspaper's presses were halted or closed down? Yet week after week websites are being threatened with take down orders. And they're just the ones we find out about.

It's wild west territory where the toughest hombres get what they want, when they want it. Internet service providers (ISP) and companies which host websites are living in fear of their collars being felt. To such a degree that most of them don't think twice about taking a site down. The findings of a recent experiment in the Netherlands says much about the future of press freedom and the internet.

Ten ISPs were sent a fictitious legal notice that a website (set up for the experiment) had material which was in breach of the law. Seven removed the text without even bothering to verify the identity of the request.

Half of them removed the text following a second email request, sent using a Hotmail address. One ISP acted within three hours of the first request by email.

In Britain last week, two web servers belonging to the Independent Media Centre (Indymedia) were seized on foot of an FBI subpoena. Twenty of the network's worldwide websites were knocked out with no reason given. Rackspace, the US hosting company (with London offices) said it was complying with a court order but could not say anymore than that.

Commenting on the seizure, Aidan White, general secretary of the International Federation of Journalists, said: "We have witnessed an intolerable and intrusive international police operation against a network specialising in independent journalism".

Compared to print, web publishers have precious little protection other than good fortune or prayer.

And with every threatening legal letter that an ISP acts upon, the web gets elbowed further from the Fourth Estate, fulfilling the prophecy from another age: "News is what someone wants to suppress. Everything else is advertising."