14 DAY TRIAL // Wikileaks is just a couple of years old, but it has amassed quite a bit of notoriety in that time. The whistle-blower site has exposed some pretty big cases and angered a lot of people, companies and government in the process. Still, it has managed to fight off any legal threat so far, of which there were many, and it wants others to feel just as secure when exposing sensitive documents or information. As such, representatives of the site are pushing to create a "journalism heaven" in Iceland, a move which has been getting some serious traction in the country.
A proposal, dubbed the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative, is going to be submitted tomorrow with Iceland's parliament. If the proposal goes through and a law based on it passed, it would make the country one of the safest places to be a journalist. The legislation would center on some crucial elements like strong source protection, freedom of speech, and libel-tourism prevention with the hope that this would create a very welcoming environment for the world's press.
The motivation behind the move is to create a strong law basis which would potentially bring in media and internet companies, an economic boost the country is in dire need of. The global economic crisis has left Iceland in particularly bad shape after its financial market collapsed. The small country had been trying to establish itself as an international financial powerhouse, a risky move that ended up badly and with Icelanders paying for the bailouts.
This has created a need for change in the country and the new journalism laws have been met with some enthusiasm. Wikileaks cofounders Julian Assange and Daniel Schmitt have been aiding the country's members of parliament who are working on the proposal. "I have been [in Iceland] the past few weeks advising parliamentarians here on a cross-party proposal to turn Iceland into an international 'journalism haven' – a jursidiction designed to attract organisations into publishing online from Iceland, by adopting the strongest press and source protection laws from around the world," Assange told the Guardian.
Wikileaks is a prime example of the type of site that would benefit from a strong set of journalism protection laws. The site is currently based in several countries which have a mixture of favorable laws, but Iceland's proposal would bring the best features together. The site itself has been safe from legal issues so far, fighting off more than 100, but it hasn't escaped a simple harsh truth, it needs money to operate. It is currently down until enough money is raised from donations to help it operate throughout 2010.