Murdering Free Speech In New Zealand: Judge Bans Internet Reporting
IN New Zealand, a judge has taken banned news websites from naming two men charged with murder while allowing newspapers, radio stations and TV networks to reveal who they are.
Judge David Harvey said online media could not use the names, or publish images of the accused, to prevent the public searching for the information when the case comes to trial.
He said he was “concerned about someone Googling someone’s name and being able to access it later”.
He was also “concerned about the viral effect of digital publication”.
Banning information?
Judge Harvey ruled in Manukau District Court that it was OK to report the names and publish the images in print tomorrow or on tonight’s 6pm television news but not on news websites.
To find out who the men are you can buy tomorrow’s New Zealand Herald.
Or read about it a million and more blogs and non-news websites…
Posted: 25th, August 2008 | In: Police Log, Strange But True Comments (4) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink
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August 27th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
What an insult! So we can only read information in a newspaper or see it on the TV because the judge thinks we are so unintelligent that we will then forget it! Heaven help anyone who keeps a newspaper! And thank goodness for the internet, for those who prefer to seek complete information and the truth and make their own minds up.
M and A
The media is usually zipped when there is to be a court case, as gossip can damage a fair trial by destroying a persons reputation, who could be innocent.
August 27th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
The law is an Ass, which makes those who preside over it…?
August 26th, 2008 at 7:09 am
George Orwell I salute you - along with Gerry Anderson Isaac newton and Leonardo da Vici!
You were years ahead of your time.
And so it came to pass that that the lap-top was a greater weapon than the gun and the rifle and WMD.
And everybody lived happily ever after - never knowing that the truth was out there - but the people at the top were protecting them from having their own thoughts about anything to do with anything that the people in charge did not want us to know about.
That makes me feel a lot better. Thank you Mr Judge. I can sleep easy tonight.
Love Coco X
August 26th, 2008 at 2:52 am
Interestingly, there is a few comments around on the net about the judge in question. he’s no technophobe:
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=655839&cid=24734915
”
I happen to know this particular Judge. You know how I met him? Playing Quake deathmatches back in the nineties. He was handy with a rocket launcher, was great base defence in CTF matches, and trash-talked like a motherfucker. Anyway, the point I’m trying to work my way around to is that this particular Judge is probably the most net-savvy online officer of the court you could ever meet. This Judge had a personal hand in the design and implementation of the in-court computer networks used in the NZ court system. Hell, this is a Judge who goes to LAN PARTIES. So I’m going to assume that he knows EXACTLY what the real-world implications of his ruling are, and he is trying to balance some conflicting principles that he cannot ignore.
So yeah, comments insinuating that this Judge doesn’t know how the Internet works are off-target. This guy has been part of the online scene since before half the script kiddies here were born.”