5 ms·

He is making it absurd. In the article the author claims that he cannot name the city of Sarajevo and that view is of course bullshit. You can always write abou

by TomK32 9y ago

He is making it absurd. In the article the author claims that he cannot name the city of Sarajevo and that view is of course bullshit. You can always write about something. The article's title is plain wrong, as is its introduction. Using the name (in a sense of making it your own or using if for something you sell) is a whole different matter though. The city of Sarajevo might not have a strong obligation to protect its name as say a music label defending their name against a computer company, but still they city has good reason to check on those things. Having said that, the city is of course morally wrong to use this power on a simple facebook page with vintage photos. They probably have a problem with some photos of times they rather want to forget (I see a photo from 1941 and IIRC that was under Nazi-occupation (stupid Italians, why would anyone ever want the balcans?)) If anything, the city should have invited the page's admins to their own tourist bureau, help them and make sure they know some basic rules about copyright (like not using photos with a Getty images watermark. seriously?).

tgtweak 9y ago
So why is there no clause in the law that states this specifically. Legally, clear as day, it's written. If the city wishes to allow it, they should amend the law to say so. If they don't, that's as good as affirmation of their perogative, especially now with this publicity. Furthermore, the motivation to do that might be helped by the authors exposure of their tactics, justifying any sensationalism. No lies are written in this article. Even if only for pedantic reasons, a law should clearly state it's interpretation. Leaving it up to arbitrary discretion is a slippery slope, and a good way to find yourself in a censorship situation. It's all unreasonable and paranoia until you get a cease-and-decist.
- TomK32 9y ago
  The law does specify it when it: "Legal and private entities". A blog post about Sarajevo can mention the city's name without falling under this law. The blogpost's title and introduction are simply wrong. Screaming wolves doesn't help the case of the facebook page, sensationalism cannot be justified here.
  - macca321 9y ago
    Where do you draw the legal entity line between a facebook page and a blog entry?
floatingatoll 9y ago
Absurdity is a valid method of handling the frequently-asked question "Okay, they want control of XYZ, why is that so bad?" regarding all XYZ — in this case, the brand a city perceives it has authority to control.
- TomK32 9y ago
  Don't forget it is the voters who gave the city this power. Laws can be changed by the next government. It would be interesting to know the history of the law's article 21. As a programmer I'm used to the transparency of my code repo and who contributed which bit. Is git-driven law-making utopian?
  - r3bl 9y ago
    > Is git-driven law-making utopian? Author of the article here, and I wish for the same. This country contains the laws on the national level, on the "state" (called entities) / district level, one of the "states" has canton-level laws, and then there's a local level. However, if you start moving between the two entities and the district (a relatively minor part of the population moves from one entity to the other), the line gets really blurry. On top of that, the laws themselves are really not available in one place. They're scattered across different websites (you'll notice that the city's statue and the law I've mentioned aren't linking to the same domain), in different formats, in different local "languages" (it's a same language, we just call it differently for political reasons), and sometimes they are scanned PDFs. It's a country with less than 4 million citizens, separated into two entities + one district, three official "languages", three presidents (no, I'm not joking, Bosnia & Herzegovina has three presidents), some international entities that guarantee the peace in the country... And while that utopian wish of Git-driven law-making seems unreachable here, the best middle-ground solution I have is to scrape a third-party resource containing most (but not all) of the laws in PDFs, and then searching through those 200ish PDF documents I've scraped (totaling at 233 MB) locally multiple times with different variations of the word I'm looking for. As an example, the term "article 1" could be found as "član 1", "članak 1", "члан 1", "clan 1" and "clanak 1" in different PDFs I've collected, and even if I search through all of the variations of the term I'm looking for, there's still a chance that the term I'm looking for might be scanned, and therefore unsearchable. And good luck to anyone who tries to find a OCR tool that understands Bosnian/Serbian/Croatian and works well enough to process scans of legal documents in shitty quality.
Dylan16807 9y ago
So obviously it's protected speech in the title of an article, but obviously it's not protected speech in the title of a facebook group? I don't think the distinction here is as strong as you imply.
- TomK32 9y ago
  The facebook page is a legal (or rather private) entity as described in the city's law, an article about the city of Sarajevo is not. If you write a book about the city, the book is not a legal entity and you'll be fine using "Sarajevo" in the title. If you name your publishing house "Sarajevo books" it is a legal entity and you might want to talk with the city first.
  - rcdwealth 9y ago
    Facebook page cannot be a "legal entity". Further, legal entities may be as well private entities. Legal entities are created by governments, either as governmental organizations (persons on paper) or as companies and various types of associations (private persons on paper). Facebook page may be opened up by such legal entity, but itself does not constitute such.
  - valuearb 9y ago
    Why would the people of Sarajevo care about a publishing house calling itself “Sarajevo books”?
rcdwealth 9y ago
I think the reason for that is the Eastern Sarajevo that is used as name by Serbs, so that is why main Sarajevo tries to forbid using name and emblem together. If law says "name and emblem" than it applies to both together. And it certainly cannot forbid people in other countries doing so, that applies for Bosnia only or for some countries having international relations with them. Try to forbid it in Uganda or Congo, it will not work like that.

by TomK32 9y ago

tgtweak 9y ago

So why is there no clause in the law that states this specifically. Legally, clear as day, it's written. If the city wishes to allow it, they should amend the law to say so. If they don't, that's as good as affirmation of their perogative, especially now with this publicity. Furthermore, the motivation to do that might be helped by the authors exposure of their tactics, justifying any sensationalism. No lies are written in this article. Even if only for pedantic reasons, a law should clearly state it's interpretation. Leaving it up to arbitrary discretion is a slippery slope, and a good way to find yourself in a censorship situation. It's all unreasonable and paranoia until you get a cease-and-decist.

TomK32 9y ago
The law does specify it when it: "Legal and private entities". A blog post about Sarajevo can mention the city's name without falling under this law. The blogpost's title and introduction are simply wrong. Screaming wolves doesn't help the case of the facebook page, sensationalism cannot be justified here.
- macca321 9y ago
  Where do you draw the legal entity line between a facebook page and a blog entry?

floatingatoll 9y ago

Absurdity is a valid method of handling the frequently-asked question "Okay, they want control of XYZ, why is that so bad?" regarding all XYZ — in this case, the brand a city perceives it has authority to control.

TomK32 9y ago
Don't forget it is the voters who gave the city this power. Laws can be changed by the next government. It would be interesting to know the history of the law's article 21. As a programmer I'm used to the transparency of my code repo and who contributed which bit. Is git-driven law-making utopian?
- r3bl 9y ago
  > Is git-driven law-making utopian? Author of the article here, and I wish for the same. This country contains the laws on the national level, on the "state" (called entities) / district level, one of the "states" has canton-level laws, and then there's a local level. However, if you start moving between the two entities and the district (a relatively minor part of the population moves from one entity to the other), the line gets really blurry. On top of that, the laws themselves are really not available in one place. They're scattered across different websites (you'll notice that the city's statue and the law I've mentioned aren't linking to the same domain), in different formats, in different local "languages" (it's a same language, we just call it differently for political reasons), and sometimes they are scanned PDFs. It's a country with less than 4 million citizens, separated into two entities + one district, three official "languages", three presidents (no, I'm not joking, Bosnia & Herzegovina has three presidents), some international entities that guarantee the peace in the country... And while that utopian wish of Git-driven law-making seems unreachable here, the best middle-ground solution I have is to scrape a third-party resource containing most (but not all) of the laws in PDFs, and then searching through those 200ish PDF documents I've scraped (totaling at 233 MB) locally multiple times with different variations of the word I'm looking for. As an example, the term "article 1" could be found as "član 1", "članak 1", "члан 1", "clan 1" and "clanak 1" in different PDFs I've collected, and even if I search through all of the variations of the term I'm looking for, there's still a chance that the term I'm looking for might be scanned, and therefore unsearchable. And good luck to anyone who tries to find a OCR tool that understands Bosnian/Serbian/Croatian and works well enough to process scans of legal documents in shitty quality.

Dylan16807 9y ago

So obviously it's protected speech in the title of an article, but obviously it's not protected speech in the title of a facebook group? I don't think the distinction here is as strong as you imply.

TomK32 9y ago
The facebook page is a legal (or rather private) entity as described in the city's law, an article about the city of Sarajevo is not. If you write a book about the city, the book is not a legal entity and you'll be fine using "Sarajevo" in the title. If you name your publishing house "Sarajevo books" it is a legal entity and you might want to talk with the city first.
- rcdwealth 9y ago
  Facebook page cannot be a "legal entity". Further, legal entities may be as well private entities. Legal entities are created by governments, either as governmental organizations (persons on paper) or as companies and various types of associations (private persons on paper). Facebook page may be opened up by such legal entity, but itself does not constitute such.
- valuearb 9y ago
  Why would the people of Sarajevo care about a publishing house calling itself “Sarajevo books”?

rcdwealth 9y ago

I think the reason for that is the Eastern Sarajevo that is used as name by Serbs, so that is why main Sarajevo tries to forbid using name and emblem together. If law says "name and emblem" than it applies to both together. And it certainly cannot forbid people in other countries doing so, that applies for Bosnia only or for some countries having international relations with them. Try to forbid it in Uganda or Congo, it will not work like that.