It started with a visit from the police presidency, who told us in a very graphic way that Section 7b, which allows the police to shut down any website or server or other similar service for up to 90 days, had been quietly passed. Without the consent of the court, the prosecutor, and with complete impunity and without consequences. We did not believe that such a thing was possible in a democratic country. We could have looked away and accepted it, but we decided to speak up. It started with an article You want to destroy the competition? Czech laws are here for you!.
A short summary before we start
Article You want to destroy the competition? Czech laws are here for you! we released 19. 2. 2019. We were surprised by how many of you decided to share it and support freedom, not just of the internet, which should only be decided by an independent court and prosecutor. Thank you very much for that. We would also like to thank the journalists who decided to focus on this difficult issue.
Of course, there were also many negative reactions, especially from people who tried to
§7b to defend. That is why we decided to refute the frequently used arguments in an article called “lex WEDOS“, published on 27. 2. 2019. It also proposes several modifications to the disputed portions of §7b. We wanted to show that it can be done democratically.
The more we looked into §7b and the events surrounding it, the more absurd we found it. We have even found that they have more moderate and, above all, more logical procedures in Russia. Read more in our article z 4. 3. 2019 We talked to Andrei about it. The situation is close to that in Russia….
We had no idea how the topic of interception of internet communications, data release and shutting down services from a legal perspective is confusing even for many experts. We have therefore decided to write down all the related sections and how they are used in practice and compare them with the new §7b. Article To help and protect? We’re gonna shut down your website. Brand. came out 5. 3.2019 and was intended for everyone who is interested in this topic and wants to learn something from behind the scenes.
It wasn’t enough to speak up, we decided to fight
We didn’t want to make this a political issue, because this is not about politics and one party, but about the basic freedoms of our entire society. In the end, we are still actively dealing with the whole thing with one political party.
The Pirate Party, which has Internet freedom as one of its main goals, was the most affected by the new §7b. This has also been pointed out to them in countless discussions, because they voted in favour of adoption.
It should be noted that this section was part of the extensive amendments to the Criminal Code. Moreover, in the explanatory memorandum on why they voted for it, they were somewhat misled, for example, by the fact that they have a similar law in Slovakia, which is not true. There, they accepted only what the EU wanted us to do – in the case of criminal activity, it is possible to impose an obligation to create a backup of data and to release it only at the request of a prosecutor or a court. Absolutely no shutting down without court approval.
On the other hand, if we citizens have to consistently read and understand all the contracts we sign or we can ruin our lives, all MPs could read and understand everything they vote for. Otherwise, from one day to the next, democracy can turn into something that was already there or something even worse.
The Pirates were the first to address the problematic paragraph. First, MEP Ferjenčík contacted us via social networks with the possibility of a meeting in July. He subsequently contacted us at the end of February via a form with the possibility of meeting in the second half of March. Last week, Mr David Wagner (assistant to MPs Profant and Peksa) contacted us and offered to meet us almost immediately. During the meeting we could discuss the problematic §7b with representatives of the Pirate Party.
We agreed to this because we must always fight to preserve freedom. As cliché as it sounds today, it’s true.
Expedition for Pirates
On Monday (11 March 2019) we went to Prague. Along the way we summarized current events and where things were written. There is a lot of misinformation on the internet nowadays, even “legal” misinformation.
We parked in Motol and took the metro to the Malostranská stop. Google then led us to the Chamber of Deputies of the Parliament of the Czech Republic. By the way, on the way we realized that we were told that a private lecture from the Police Presidium on how we have to shut down services or give away data from now on was apparently also given to the Czech Google. Or so we believe. We don’t know of anyone else.
We took a quick photo to give us something to put in today’s article and headed to the MP’s office building.
Mr. David Wagner picked us up at the gatehouse, welcomed us and took us to the office where the whole delegation was waiting for us. We got to know everyone and the discussion could begin.
At the beginning, we found the Pirates a bit aloof. Internally, they probably hoped that the new §7b would not be as much of a problem as the articles describe. But after a few minutes they understood that it was a problem and a big one. They admitted to us that they had their own legal analysis that confirmed our version.
As soon as the atmosphere changed from “maybe it’s not as bad as you say” to “okay it’s a mess, let’s do something about it”, we felt inclined to actually do something about it. But mostly they listened to us in detail. They didn’t have much idea how it actually works with hosting companies and what is the real practice. We were happy to explain everything to them in detail and to suggest possible adjustments, for example according to Slovakia.
Some of the Pirates had to leave for a meeting of their republican committee. Four members remained, the majority of whom were Mr David Wagner and Mr Ondřej Profant. The atmosphere became even more relaxed. It was clear that they are taking the whole situation very seriously and already have concrete ideas on how to deal with it. In other words, they’ve probably thought about it before and now they’ve brought us up to speed on their planned course of action, which would certainly help now.
We appreciate the Pirate Party’s efforts to preserve the democratic principles of the Czech Republic, and we believe they will not remain just words.
We have agreed that we have to provide documents from our side, on the basis of which they can develop arguments for limiting the police to shut down every website without consequences. Instead, the police will be limited to serious crime only and will have to request a warrant from the prosecutor or the court within 48 hours. Simply put, if one of you is illegally shut down, it will be for 2 days at most, which is still survivable. Certainly the previous legislation would have been better, and therefore similar to the Slovak one = without prior approval of the court (exceptionally the prosecutor), police officers themselves cannot switch off anything. In this situation, we are happy for anything.
We have sent documents to MPs during the course of today, including anonymised requests from the Czech Police recently, showing that this is not one random slip-up, but many different issues. We therefore consider our concerns to be justified.
On the other hand, if they shut down your eshop for 3 months for no reason, you’re out. You will fall out of the search engines, you will not have orders, you will not have anything to pay your employees, suppliers, and if you have a loan that you guarantee with property, you can literally jump off a bridge…
Completion at 16:00 on 12. March 2019:
The Pirate Party issued a statement on the matter today.
List of messages
The whole case about Section 7b did not go unnoticed by one of the biggest internet TV stations, Seznam. Mrs. Eliška Kolomazníková chased our boss last week. When she tried to find out more about §7b, no one would comment – neither lawyers nor MPs. Which will arouse even more interest in any investigative journalist.
So we arranged to film right after the meeting with the Pirates. You can see the result of the shooting in yesterday’s (11.3.2019) Seznam Zpravy from about 7:30.
idnes.cz
Today (12 March 2019) an article was also published on idnes.cz. It’s a pity that a magistrate was quoted, who really should probably return her law school diploma… It is not possible to misinterpret the law in this way even by the nature of the logic of the text.
At the same time, Dr Tomáš Sokol was quoted as calling the new provision controversial and giving us the benefit of the doubt that the new provision may allow for abuse in the future. Similarly, Dr. Sokol agrees with our view that under the new provision the website can be shut down for up to 90 days.
Conclusion
Every time we wrote another article, we thought that would be enough. That we could get back to our work. Write about new technologies and services we are working on. Instead of investing dozens of hours, maybe even much more, to get back to proper wedo marketing. But somehow it’s not working. We have knowledge of the issues and others in the industry are silent as if nothing is happening. We don’t know why they won’t support us…
Thanks again to everyone for sharing information about the dangerous §7b – as many people as possible need to know about it, to the journalists who are not afraid to write about it, and to the Pirates for listening to us and planning something.