IT and society: Iceland to become an information haven

The parliament of Iceland has approved a bill that will provide journalists and whistle-blowers with an information refuge. 

The first website to make use of the new rules will become Wikileaks, which specializes on publication of information about corporate and governmental malfeasance and corruption by releasing secret and classified documents. From 2009 Wikileaks has been carrying negotiations with Icelandic authorities.

The Icelandic bill is the product of the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative. The project’s goal is to strengthen freedoms of expression and information freedom in Iceland, as well as providing strong protections for sources and whistleblowers.

Iceland is aiming to build an internationally attractive legislative package built from the best laws of other nations. The only serious problem is the fact that Iceland is bandwidth-constrained, which would have an impact on anyone who chose to locate media servers in that country, although Iceland has been laying cables in an attempt to build up its hosting abilities.