more from Wikileaks. Reassuring

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R v Internet - or was it journos v lawyers, and where is the horse?

I was at the R v Internet seminar today. It appears journalists and internet people were outnumbered by legal people and public servants.

It was an interesting forum, with everyone recognising that the Internet makes name suppression of celebrities redundant, and can threaten an accused's right to a fair trial. Some such as Victoria University Professor Tony Smith, considered that many problems were to do with the unregulated blogosphere. Steven Price, himself a blogger, as well as a university lecturer with legal and journalism credentials, was more realistic about what to do when suppression is breached. In short, the genie is out of the bottle, the horse has bolted, and there's nothing you can do. However, judges should direct juries to enable fair trials by advising that information "out there" may not be reliable.

Deputy Law Commissioner Warren Young, in talking about the recent Law Commission report, Suppressing Names and Evidence [PDF] explained how the Commission wants to tighten laws around suppression, particularly those of celebrities. Young did not consider the " horse had bolted", and made an analogy between suppression and shoplifting. Namely the fact that while lots of people know the name of a certain celebrity does not mean that suppression should be done away with just as many people who shoplift does not mean that shoplifting should be decriminalised. Yet there's a distinction: Many people consider that suppression - particularly of celebrities - should not be against the law, whereas most believe shoplifting should be illegal.

Judge David Harvey spoke in the afternoon and livened things up. He thinks the Internet can be regulated, and pointed to China as an example of regulation. But when asked about sites like Facebook and Twitter, he was out of his depth. He doesn't appear to have heard of platforms such as ping.fm where you can simultaneously post an item to Facebook, Twitter, Friendfeed, blogs and other social networking sites. Rather than " the horse has bolted" he appears to think that the horse has briefly wandered out of the stable, and on a leash, but is unsure how long that leash is.

Canterbury University Associate Professor Ursula Cheer was very good on the legal side of suppression and contempt, but admittedly less clear on the tools of the Internet. She emphasised the truth that many legal people are not as clued up on social network programmes as they would like to or need to be, just as some bloggers and social networkers are ignorant of the law surrounding what they can and cannot publish. The former group don't think the horse has bolted - the latter think the horse bolted some time back. Bernard Hickey brought up what I thought was a good suggestion in that the two groups get together informally and discuss some of the issues raised, believing that the legal people and the technically savvy people, including online journalists, were "talking past each other". The question they should work towards agreement on is this: Where is the horse?

David Farrar also spoke. He was the only speaker who was not a journalist or a lawyer. He started off by discussing the prominent entertainer whose name was suppressed, and how he has seen the name on TradeMe, Yahoo Answers, and MSN NZ. I also found it on the front page of a certain Twitter search. As Farrar was talking about this suppression, and how angry he gets when people get away with breaching suppression on blogs, what did he do... he breached suppression to those with eagle eyes after telling everyone how he viewed the man's Facebook site. Oops. He also raised good points regarding what is actually a breach - a link to another site, a hint, a pointer to another site that the name is accessed. Many in the legal fraternity believed that nearly everyone under the age of 30 know who this person is, not so many over that age. I spoke to two law students during the lunch break, both were internet savvy, both were interested in Internet issues to do with suppression and contempt - both under 30 and both had no idea who this entertainer was.

The entire forum was videoed and will be available. You should be able to find it by googling it sometime.

Uh-oh - that's no way to announce an election

Labour's chief whip in the UK is Nick Brown. Austin Mitchell is a Labour MP and a former whip. They are discussing the UK election, which apparently may be in a few weeks after a new speaker is appointed. The current speaker was forced out earlier this week. Brown's Twitter has been deleted, after earlier being restricted. That's what you get when the whip tells MPs - via Twitter - when the election may be.

Gordon Brown didn't use Twitter to clarify things.
hattipvia Kester Brewin

Journalists, Twitter and the c-word.

Many journalists pass their time away on Twitter. Bloggers read Twitter too. Because some journos say things to each other on Twitter that they will never publish in the newspapers.

Like this, discussing Michael Laws and the h not yet in the word Wanganui.



UPDATE 1:20pm April 13. Apparently he does not want to Tweet anymore. Twitter. Tried it, failed to see the point or get excited, gonna stick to blogging and RL. Will keep my account open though. Bye all.

Fake Twitter sites II

Prime Minister John Key is on Twitter. Except he probably doesn't know it. So is David Carter, and TheStandard. Most of these sites look fake, and look like stalker sites. All are friends with Labour activist Sonny Thomas, who tweets here. One of Thomas' tweets was “contemplating actually doing something today, as yesterday was a total drunken right off.”

Right off?

Even Phil Goff has a fake site. Helen Clark has two fake sites with no tweets. Wonder who set these up?

More fake political Twitter sites here.

Fake political twitter sites

Some clever idiot has created a whole host of fake political Twitter sites. Twitter is a microblogging and social networking site. The fake sites include @NationalParty, @NZFirst, @EPMU, @NZGreenParty, @NZUnitedFuture, @FamilyFirst and @NZPolitics. There are about 24 sites that have been created. The National Party's one is here and you can access the rest from that page.

All carry news links to stories from Voxy, and nothing else, and all sites follow each other. Some people have been sucked in to following them and are getting hit with all the relevant Voxy stories.

I have reported them all as Spam. Looks like all have been created by the same person. I wonder if it is someone from Voxy that is doing this? Both the Greens and the National Party have legitimate sites on Twitter, The Nats are @NZNationalParty and the Green Party is at @NZGreens.

Using your blog to promote Twitter

Most people would know now that Twitter is a microblogging site. Some bloggers use Twitter, and it is now one of the first points of call for my international news.

So if you wondered why there is a drop off in blogging on Big News, here's one of the reasons why: I also use Twitter. Those who do tweet on Twitter will know that Darren Rowse from Problogger is an avid user of Twitter and has set up a popular site called Twitips (Twitter Tips) to assist people in their use of Twitter.

Here's an article I wrote for his site: Using your blog to promote Twitter. It was published this morning. Oh, and you can follow me on Twitter here.

Blogroll v twitter roll

Many bloggers like to link in with like minded bloggers, and so their sites have a blog roll. I have two, one for local bloggers and one for overseas bloggers. Many of them also have twitter pages. Most of these Twitter pages have their blog or website URLs on them and people are reading Twitter more which means they are reading blogs less.

So why not have a Twitter roll. It seems the logical thing to do. And I've never seen one, I have started my own in a drop down menu and it is a work in progress. I'm sure it won't be the last one. I may have to cull my blogroll eventually.