BROOKE GLADSTONE: We're back with On the Media. I'm Brooke Gladstone. Pan-European organizations are not the most original when it comes to naming themselves. The Council of Europe should not be mistaken for the European Council which is made up of leaders from the European Union which also oversees a fourth group -- the Council of the European Union. So it may be that the Council of Europe is trying to distinguish itself by tackling the issue of free speech on the internet -- yes, we finally got to the subject. The council has written a proposal that would require any web site registered in one of its member countries to post responses from every person criticized on the site -- this so-called "Right of Reply" resolution is intentionally broad. The first draft targeted only professional on line media such as newspaper web sites, but the council specifically changed it to include anything on line. Declan McCullagh criticized the resolution in a recent article on CNET's News.com. It's fair to say that he thinks it's a disaster. Declan, welcome to On the Media!

DECLAN McCULLAGH: Why thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: So what's so bad about this proposal? People get to respond to people who say bad things about them.

DECLAN McCULLAGH:[LAUGHS] Well - well that, that's the positive view. [LAUGHTER] As for the negative view I'm not sure where to start. I criticize people on my own personal web site pretty frequently -- maybe even multiple times a day. If I had to go through and insert links to replies, I'd have to verify that the person sending me this link is in fact the person being criticized. Then this makes me do more work. If I only have a full hour to spend every day, this might make me shy away from talking about controversial subjects.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:So when Germany's Der Spiegel responded to you by saying "the idea that the writer reply in the on line media leads to censorship is nonsense" -- you say "No, because it creates so much trouble you might just censor yourself out of sheer exhaustion."

DECLAN McCULLAGH: That's exactly right. This is the utilitarian argument against it.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:With regard to the exhaustion issue, why couldn't you just set up a right of reply message board or guest book like a lot of web sites have already?

DECLAN McCULLAGH:I don't know whether that's going to be covered by what the Council of Europe intends. We'll probably see the answer when the member nations of the Council of Europe -- and there are 45 of them -- pretty much every major and minor country in Europe -- start to draft implementing legislation, and they'll answer that question. It may be that a discussion board is okay. I'd guess not though, because the reply has to be posted in the same -- as prominently as the original statement.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Now this proposal that the Council of Europe has come up with is still in the proposal stage. Do you think it will get passed?

DECLAN McCULLAGH:The answer to your question depends on the current laws that various European countries already have and have had for many years. Ireland and the UK for instance have not enacted a right of reply for traditional media, and I'll say it's a reasonable bet that they won't for the internet either, but most other countries have.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Now I know you don't support this, but I wonder if you can speculate on the reasons why they passed these kinds of laws.

DECLAN McCULLAGH:I interviewed an official at the Council of Europe and he said that we need this because internet publishers -- and he singled out bloggers -- are becoming so important that we need to extend these traditional old rules that have been around for a while into cyberspace, saying that bloggers need to offer this right of reply because they're being as influential in some cases as traditional media.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:But isn't this essentially like almost all attempts to regulate internet speech pretty much unenforceable? I mean that was always a reason given for why America never passed a comprehensive bill like this. I mean you could just register your site anywhere outside of Europe and be done with it.

DECLAN McCULLAGH:I think that's right. One reason why courts have been very leery in the U.S. of saying that aggressive internet regulation is a good thing is of course the First Amendment which Europe for better or for worse doesn't have. But another reason that comes up occasionally in policy discussions is what you were just talking about -- it just takes one jurisdiction to say, allow a certain type of controversial speech and as long as we have an internet connection to this other country, then it's going to be pretty difficult for us to rid the internet of this type of speech completely.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: So since you think that the Council of Europe will get its right of reply proposal passed, what impact do you think it'll have.

DECLAN McCULLAGH:What I'll guess is that it will force the smaller publishers to shy away from discussing controversial topics, and it also might make people more inclined to set up anonymous or pseudonymous accounts in the U.S. or in the UK where they can blog and publish and discuss to their heart's content without having to worry about what the Council of Europe thinks.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Well Declan McCullagh, thank you very much!

DECLAN McCULLAGH: My pleasure.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Declan McCullagh is the chief political correspondent for CNET's News.com. [MUSIC]