Interesting News from Autralia where the NSW Supreme Court, has called for the internet to be purged of any material likely to prejudice a trial in order to prevent jurors conducting their own investigations into cases on which they are sitting. That’s The Internet not just servers in Australia. The Australian has a few more details as well.
ISPs suggested that was impossible, according to the story, because much of the material was likely to reside on offshore servers — such as search engines like Google and independent archives of newspapers, not to mention the internet archival project’s comprehensive attempt to mirror the entire internet.
But Judge Bell contends that anyone serving up such material could be subject to contempt of court proceedings, regardless of where they were located. The High Court found in a 2002 defamation case — Gutnick v Dow Jones — that internet articles are published where they are read.
oh, *that’s* clever
But they just need to delete that icon from all Australian desktops, right? The one called “The Internet”? … Sigh. Could we require judges who rule on the modern world to go through a minimum of technical training? Please?
Or not. If they knew how unfetterable information — true, false, dangerous, what-have-you — is, they’d probably order the destruction of the root nameservers. They have some idea of knowledge as this safe and error-free Encyclopedia Brittanica (12-year-old editors notwithstanding), which can be purged on government demand.
They say managing programmers is like herding cats, but I wonder if being a librarian is like trying to classify whizzing electrons. Whereas this judge thinks it’s more like herding a nice safe herd animal. Cows, maybe. My analogy is straining…
Re:oh, *that’s* clever
Or not. If they knew how unfetterable information — true, false, dangerous, what-have-you — is, they’d probably order the destruction of the root nameservers.
Dammit! Don’t give them any ideas!
Re:oh, *that’s* clever
“If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
I have to wonder…
Did Australia legalize crack? Because marijuana does not make someone that stupid, it takes a much stronger substance.
The key to failure is ignorance.