In my opinion, by far the best solution is to allow private enterprise to run courts and compete with the incompetent bureaucratic public courts – and allow customers to choose which to use.

I have seen no good or valid reason to prevent this happening. The reforms that would ensue from a customer-focussed competitive approach would be hugely beneficial.

In a functioning civil society this must be viewed as a serious problem.It has been bought about by a toxic combination of bad laws interepreted poorly by the judicary so litigants have no faith in the Court system This couple with the pathetic delays in getting cases to Court and the costs means that the free market prevails. IE the customers take their business elsewhere.

Sadly because we have a Parliament and Judicary that doesnt understand or recognise the concept of the customer and believes the system is there to serve them and not the customer the situation will continue

Maybe there is now just extra incentive to not get into court, eh?

I won’t post links here out of respect for DPF, but there are plenty – googlers will have no problem finding these guys.

http://news.smh.com.au/world/nz-judge-bans-net-naming-of-defendants-20080825-422f.html

I wonder where else this has been reported overseas…. talk about turn it into an international event.

That article was copied to

Sydney Morning Herald
Nine MSN
news24.com
slashdot
Washington Post

and a zillion others… just search for “NZ judge bans Net naming of defendants”

gee that one really worked.

IMHO the days of masonic secretcy of the Courts are a 20th Century concept and have no place in an open and informed society.

Bernard, if you think the judge deserves more respect then show why. I see no reason.

David, why don’t you remove crap like this? This sort of moronic bigotry does Kiwiblog no favours; it undermines the quality and insight of your writing, and makes it look as though your readers are a bunch of semi-literate rednecks. Which, of course, they aren’t…

I’m all for everyone being able to partake in the conversation, but what exactly does drivel like this contribute to the debate?

Suppose I am killed by poison, and DPF is arrested and accused of my murder. The blogosphere goes wild, everyone on-line gets in on the act, and 25 million hits are created on the Google gawp.
THEN, during the trial, DPF establishes that he did not commit the murder – someone else did. Three newspapers and one blog, kiwi style, print the revised facts. four hits are created on the Google gawp

David sufferers a bit of a financial set back, and applies for a job. The hiring manager does the ‘normal’ and googles him. only to find – SHOCK HORROR – that the applicant is a MURDERER!!!!

Reasonable NO

Possible DEFINATELY

Perhaps ‘post trial’ will become the norm for when ‘accused’ can be named in ANY media, just to preserve that most basic of our judicial tenets – INNOCENT until PROVEN guilty.

PART TWO

I get a gMail address
Register here as a subscriber
Post the names of the accused
close down the gMail address

WHO gets prosecuted for Contempt of Court?

If DPF is the correct answer, then ALL contributions better be moderated prior to posting in the not too distant future!

WE are a long way away from understanding what we have created!

As I said in my blog, I can see where Harvey is coming from but I think his implementation is grossly flawed.

I draw parallels with “Constable A” in the Waitara shooting and point out the utter futility of this action. In fact it’s almost certain to backfire big-time as this watershed suppression ruling attracts the attention of the world’s mainstream media and bloggers.

The suppressed information will soon be all over the web (published by those outside the reach of NZ’s laws) so unless Judge Harvey is planning on ordering Google not to return search results from overseas websites, he’s achieved nothing except to demonstrate how powerless the courts really are in cyberspace.

My personal view is that it was a good move on Judge Harvey’s behalf, to either set precedent or at least get Parliamentary attention for possible future reviews or reforms

It seems to me that such a ruling is the start of a China style ‘filter’ on content available in the ‘NZ Domain’. It would be ridiculously easy to implement a content filter to scan for the names and/or sites you have baned from being accessed via the net.

To me this sounds like yet another step down the murky road of encroaching on freedom of speech and flow of information. However I guess I can always leave the country if I feel strongly about it, we are not detaining dissenters for re-education yet are we?

What on earth will this achieve? The jurors will know the names of the defendents. They can google anything they want. They can find out all about the case by googling the name of the victim.

It’s bizarre and ridiculous and will achieve absolutely nothing except to increase internet interest in the case by several orders of magnitude. Have judicial foot, will shoot it.