Apparently bloggers are already challenging the internet suppression order laid down by Judge Harvey on Monday.
The raging beast that is the blogosphere is buzzing with debate over this decision to ban internet media from publishing the names of two men.
A large portion of news readers are online, and almost all of them know how to google. So if someone puts it on their site, and that site starts to get traffic, it will skyrocket up search ranks, quite likely to the top fold of search results. This is probably enough bait for someone to test it alone. Huge publicity for printing a couple of names.
It does have a sense of experiment to it and apparently we will soon have willing test subjects.
Now that the case has built up some media reef-fish I’m sure it will become common knowledge soon enough. I’m sure print and broadcast mediums will reach most of New Zealand.
Once those names hit the press tomorrow, it will only be a matter of how long until someone posts them. And from there…? What’s the penalty?
It is said that this Judge is particularly web-savvy and that he wrote the main book on internet law in NZ. So he knows what he’s talking about. Now, I’m about the furthest thing from an expert as you can get, but I think a certain Chinese gymnast may be the butterfly on the other side of the world that started a web whirlwind in NZ.
I think the logic behind it is that the case would be biased if jurors accessed material which was cached during the time before the trial. The true power of cached files were shown to us recently in spectacular fashion by an American hacker. Wow. Brave guy for doing that.
The jurors could be you and I.
It’s a lot easier to google a name than go down and scour through records. So unless you personally read, saw or recorded the coverage or was told in depth about the accused, or kept the paper clippings, the only other avenues are the internet and records.
I don’t think many jurors would go out of their way to check out the accused if there was actually nothing about it on the net.
So it would theoretically discourage people from biasing themselves through super-easy access to surrounding material and curiosity. We are curious creatures. If the buttons right there, the chances are we’ll push it. If its a huge research mission to find the button in a public place, we might not.
That’s a recipe for a higher chance of justice for a defendant with a side order of media law for us news fiends.
And maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about.. but I’m always interested to see people trying out new things. Thanks for the precedent case, how long until someone will be game enough to play for keeps?
