New kiwi blog

An old-style post-title for an old-style post! Che Tibby returns to blogging with The Apocrypha of Noah - which so far, seems to be looking at climate change.

New Kiwi blog

Kiwi Firewalker - who has recently been blogging at KiwiPolitico and now has their own platform.

New kiwi blog

On The Left - a collective of lefties.

An injunction which makes no difference

According to the Herald's Tim Murphy on Twitter:

Court result: Whaledump injuncted on an interim basis while three media cos not. Effect of that: material already in hand by media usable.

Which, given that Whaledump gave everything to the media this morning and shut up shop, means we have an injunction which makes no difference. The media are still free to report, and we're all still free to comment, on Slater's dirty political relationships and defamation-for-hire. Which given how central this is to the election campaign, is the right result. The thought of a judge injuncting publication and comment on something of such clear public interest and which calls the ethics of our politicians into question at election time is just a bit... British for my tastes.

Unsurprising

No bloggers have signed up to join the Online Media Standards Authority. This isn't really surprising. For a start, membership costs $500 a year (and ten times that if too many people complain) - well beyond the means of most bloggers. Secondly, there's absolutely no benefits in doing so. Belonging to OMSA simply exposes you to a complaints mechanism, which can and will be used by the sewer to silence people (and to stick them with the bill for full membership). Why would anyone sign up to that?

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Polity, by Rob Salmond

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The Left Estate

New Kiwi blog

Telling it Left, from Deborah Russell. This seems to be an effort to seperate her life-blogging from her political stuff.

Information thuggery

That's the only way to describe Ports of Auckland's leaking of an employee's personal information to a sewerblogger:

Personal details about Cecil Walker and the number of days he took off work in 2007 and 2008 while his late wife was terminally ill have been published by the right-wing blogger Cameron Slater on his website Whale Oil.

Walker says no one had the information - which includes specific details about how many days he took off in sick, compassionate and bereavement leave - except the port company.

Whale Oil also published details about Walker's new marriage and baby, saying the port company sent his new wife a gift basket after the baby was born.

This is par for the course for Slater, who specialises in such thuggery. But its a new low for a company in an industrial dispute. OTOH, they're simply taking the lead from Government Ministers, who have previously used this tactic to undermine and deter people from criticising them over cuts to benefits and health services. In that case, its likely to cost the government (though sadly not Bennett herself) a large amount of money. And the same is likely to happen to Ports of Auckland. The people of Auckland deserve better form those they trust to manage their assets.

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The Lady Garden - tea and strumpets

New Kiwi blog

The Stroppery

Against regulating the blogosphere

Yesterday in Parliament, Justice Minister Simon Power announced that he had asked the Law Commission to look at ways of regulating the blogosphere. The reason?

“It’s a bit of a Wild West out there in cyberspace at the moment, because bloggers and online publishers are not subject to any form of regulation or professional or ethical standards.

"Issues I’m concerned about include how trials can be prejudiced by information posted on websites and seen by jurors, real-time online streaming of court cases, breaches of court suppression orders, and re-publication of a libel.

These are all things worth looking at, because the law needs to keep up with the technology (if it can). But Power is fundamentally mistaken about two things. First, he's fundamentally mistaken in thinking bloggers should be treated as if they were professionals, because we simply aren't. The typical blogger is a private individual mouthing off on the internet. Some of us know a little about what we are mouthing off about, some of us don't - but fundamentally, its no different from people talking in a cafe. The government wouldn't dream of trying to regulate and force "professional standards" on that, and rightly so. So why is it trying to regulate and force professional standards on the same conversations in the blogosphere? It smacks of another example of the old problem of things being suddenly scarier the moment you attach the word "internet" to them.

Secondly, the claim that we are not subject to any form of regulation is simply false. As a blogger, I'm subject to exactly the same laws as Power is in issuing his press releases. If I defame someone, I can be sued. If I publish objectionable material, I can be prosecuted. If I breach a court suppression order, I can be fined. Rather than showing that the blosophere is a "wild west", the recent Whale Oil case showed that the law is perfectly capable of dealing with it.

The problem for the justice system isn't the blogosphere, but the net's combination of strong anonyminity and a free market in legal jurisdictions. The same technology that allows human rights activists to hide from the Iranian regime and circumvent the Great Firewall of China also allows people to read or post or host information which undermines our justice system. It could be used, for example, to set up a website whose sole function is to violate New Zealand suppression orders. If located in the right jurisdiction, such a site could never be taken down at source. It could never be effectively blocked - "the net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it" is an old saw, but its also true (in that such blocks are also fundamentally ineffective). And unless the authors were very, very stupid, they would never be caught.

But there's nothing the government can do about that. Nothing. The collective minds of the world's most powerful dictatorships can't stop it, so I doubt New Zealand could. More importantly, adding new laws does nothing to help. The problem is not that such behaviour wouldn't be illegal, its that we now have reliable technological means to not get caught.

But the blogosphere isn't in that space. Its already subject to existing laws. And those laws seem to generally be up to the task. We don't need new ones.

Anderton and earthquakes

On Sunday morning, in the wake of the Christchurch earthquake, the Herlad reported that

Christchurch mayoral aspirant Jim Anderton told CTV on Friday that it would take an earthquake for him to lose the election race against incumbent mayor Bob Parker.

Like many people, I spread the news over twitter, amused at the cosmic irony. But it turns out it was a fabrication. According to the actual interview [video, 54s in], Anderton actually said:

There was a long history with the Labour Party. It would have taken a pretty earthquake, seismic shift to get me to move. And the seismic shift was Rogernomics...

So, I apologise for spreading the misquote or misleading anyone. Meanwhile, I'm wondering: what sort of person edits together a video like this in an effort to make someone "say" something they clearly didn't? Its dishonest, not to mention just a bit weird. But that seems to be par for the course down there in the sewer.

On the House adjourns

Colin Espiner has formally adjourned his blog On the House. Its kindof expected - he's moved on from the gallery into another role, which has left him less time for blogging - but its still a shame. But apparently Stuff will be spawning another political blog soon, and hopefully it will share many of the same virtues.

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WCC Watch - keeping an eye on the Wellington City Council and elections.

The blogosphere is not above the law

While attention is focused on WhaleOil and his latest run-in with the courts over violating a suppression order, another sewerblogger has just been convicted of doing exactly that. The story is front-page news in the Manawatu Standard, but not yet online:

A blogger who revealed the identity of a high-profile political figure in a domestic abuse case, defying a court suppression order, says it was an anger-fuelled error.

"I wish I hadn't now," said sickness beneficiary [name and age deleted - I/S], before being convicted in the Dannevirke District Court yesterday of breaching a name suppression order.

He pleaded guilty to the charge, laid under the Family Court Act, and was given a suspended sentence because he was unable to do community work or pay a fine.

The judge has suppressed any details that would identify the blogsite the comments were posted on. Despite this, the newspaper has given the blogger's name and information on another incident they were involved in which makes it quite clear what the site is (or, if you don't already know, makes it a trivial task to find using Google). Which tells you that the judge doesn't understand the internet very well at all. All it takes is one fact, and your suppression order is meaningless.

In the long run, the judiciary is fighting a losing battle here. While there are clearly cases where name suppression is in the interests of justice (to protect the right to a fair trial, or to protect children who are victims of crime), it is now no longer technologically possible. In order to be effective, suppression orders would have to infringe on the principle of open justice so severely as to be unacceptable in all but the most extreme of cases. Anything less than that is a charade, particularly if it is attempting to suppress information which is already in the public domain. The only way these secrets will be kept is if people believe they deserve to be kept. And in cases involving high profile politicians, sportsmen and celebrities, where there is a whiff of celebrity justice and favours for the powerful, that simply will not happen.

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Soap Box - New Zealand

New kiwi blog

Policy Progress - a policy "think-site" devoted to developing and supporting progressive initiatives and ideas in Aotearoa-New Zealand.

The think-site idea is good, similar to the ideas behind the NZ Progressive Bills Project, but with a much broader focus. They'll be aiming to do three to four reports a year on policy issues. Its work programme isn't online yet, but will be up soon. I'm looking forward to seeing it.

The blogosphere is not above the law

Since the beginning, there's been a meme on the internet that the law doesn't really apply here, and that we can get away with anything. But while there may be practical difficulties (particularly if people are smart and careful), it certainly does, and if the government can track you down, they can certainly hold you to account for any misdeeds.

The New Zealand blogosphere is about to be reminded of this. Earlier in the month, a well-known sewerblogger published the name of an accused rapist, in violation of a suppression order. He is now being prosecuted, and if convicted he could be fined up to $1,000. It couldn't happen to a nicer guy...

But while this may give some bloggers pause for thought, it is not going to solve the wider problem of suppression orders being violated on the internet. Like it or not, we have a free market in legal jurisdiction now, meaning that people can simply view information legally published overseas. And if the government tries to crack down on that (as the Law Commission ahs suggested), the internet will simply interpret their attempted censorship as damage and route around it. It is now, in a practical sense and regardless of the ethics, impossible to keep such information secret. Which means the government is fighting a losing battle.

In defence of (some) name suppression

So, someone in the sewer has outed the olympic sportsman currently accused of rape. They're outraged that name suppression was granted in this case - and given some recent cases, where it seems to have been granted to the rich and famous solely on the basis of their manufactured celebrity, I agree there are strong reasons for suspicion. But this is not such a case. There are a number of perfectly valid reasons why pre-trial suppression orders can be granted in the interests of justice, and this clearly falls into that category. Unfortunately, making that argument would likely also breach the suppression order. So, I'll simply say this:

The accused sportsman faces four charges of rape, one abduction charge, one charge of unlawful sexual connection, five charges of assault, one of threatening to kill and one of threat of intent to injure.

These are serious charges, and if you believe the accused to be guilty of them, then what you should be hoping for is that they are tried, convicted, and punished according to law. Violating the suppression order puts that process in jeopardy. It creates instant grounds for appeal, and some risk of an acquittal to prevent a miscarriage of justice. If you think they're guilty, then that is the very last thing you should want to see happen.