Internet issues
« Previous Entries Next Entries »Officials drop the BORA on 92A
Monday, February 23rd, 2009Our Bill of Rights vetting process has failed miserably again. This is the system that’s supposed to pick up rights issues when a Bill is introduced to Parliament and consider whether the proposals are demonstrably justified. When a Bill affects free speech, officials are supposed to highlight the problem and ask questions like: “What’s the […]
Page views, not site-hits, needed for defamation claim
Monday, November 10th, 2008Want to sue someone for defamation for something posted online? You’ll need better evidence than the number of people who visited the website, according to the British High Court. The courts won’t assume that visitors to the website will have hunted out the material you’re suing about (unless it’s high up on the home page, […]
Nice job 1
Thursday, October 2nd, 2008Kudos to: Judge David Harvey for reversing course on the suppression order that applied only to the internet. As I’ve discussed, he had reasons for imposing the unusual order, though I thought they weren’t sufficient. When the media belatedly turned up to argue the toss, the judge accepted that: absent an identifiable risk to a […]
Judge Harvey lifts internet suppression order
Friday, September 19th, 2008It seems the media’s submissions on Friday were successful. Haven’t seen the decision yet.
How to shut down speech on the internet. Maybe.
Thursday, September 4th, 2008Sebastian Hoegl, a masters student from Germany in my media law seminar, made a startling suggestion this week. Since we all access the internet via an ISP (we put in a web address, the ISP hives off, collects the data, and sends it to our computers), then the ISPs are publishing that material to us. […]
Defamation liability for threads on blogs and news websites
Sunday, August 31st, 2008Remember the basic rule of defamation: you publish it, you’re liable for it. That includes everyone involved in the publication. In a newspaper: the quoted source, the reporter, the subeditor, the editor, the publisher, the printer, the paperboy, and the bookshop. (The last three probably have a defence of innocent dissemination, as long as they’ve […]
Feeling sorry for Vince?
Tuesday, June 17th, 2008Poor Vincent Siemer. Facing a limitless stretch in the slammer for … what? A couple of websites? Oath. I’m afraid I find it difficult to get too worked up about Vince’s plight. He’d like to pitch his troubles as a freedom of expression battle against a corrupt businessman (his nemesis, Michael Stiassny), and corrupt lawyers (including his own), and […]
Regulating broadcasting content
Monday, May 26th, 2008You may know that the government is having a big think about what to do about the patchwork of increasingly moth-eaten laws and regimes that govern broadcasting content. It has produced discussion papers and invited feedback. The submissions are here. More on this soon.
Soapbox: internet company ISPed off
Thursday, April 24th, 2008Don Price, head of the Hawkes Bay internet company Wasp, wrote in to argue that ISPs are grown-up enough to develop their own industry standards: I find it very interesting that once again we (the internet business community) through the new Copyright Act will have the unenviable privilege of the legal fraternity with their intellectual might […]
To die like a blog
Saturday, April 19th, 2008Poneke is reporting that blogger HotTopic has withdrawn a post criticising the Listener and its editor after receiving a (presumably defamation) threat from the magazine’s lawyers. In its place, there’s a fullsome correction and apology (which looks to have been drafted by said lawyers). In the comments section of the correction and apology, someone has helpfully posted […]
« Previous Entries Next Entries »