December 23rd, 2008 at 8:54 am by David Farrar
- Great to see a $100,000 fine for Lance Atkinson for spamming. The law was designed to allow us to target the big time professional spam outfits who make us pay through our ISP costs for their spamming. It’s all about property rights, and they have no right to make me pay for them sending me and others billions of emails.
- The Law Commission is looking at the vexed issue of suppression orders and the Internet. It is a very worthy topic. As a web publisher myself I find it difficult to obey the law, because I don’t know what information has been suppressed, so it is difficult to police the site for mentions of it, when you don’t know that the info itself is suppressed. The entire suppression and contempt regime does need to be evaluated against the Internet age we are in, and this looks a useful first step. You can read the paper from the Commission here, and submit on it by February.
Tags:
Internet,
Law Commission,
name suppression,
spam
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December 23rd, 2008 at 8:58 am
It’s *NOT* great to see Lance Atkinson getting a $100K fine for spamming. I blogged about this today — if you want to see my rationale for such a statement, go read my blog — I hope I’m not alone in my perspective on this one.
As for the suppression orders on the internet — can you say “peeing in the wind”?
This is likely to be as effective as the ban on drink-driving, the ban on shoplifting and the ban on assault.
Perhaps we would be better advised to look at the whole issue of suppression orders per-se. NZ seems to get really carried away with issuing such orders — far more than the courts of other countries. Is that a good thing or not?
Vote:December 23rd, 2008 at 9:03 am
And I was just about to post that Aardvark had a good take on the whole $100K fine for spamming … it’s a good read.
Vote:December 23rd, 2008 at 9:08 am
On the subject of the Internet David – Congratulations on your appointment.
[DPF: Ta]
Vote:December 23rd, 2008 at 9:11 am
And in order to catch the odd spammer, farrar and co endorsed a law that impinges on my democratic freedom to make contact with people, my ability to promote my business and services. A pox on all those who supported the “Anti-spam laws”!
As to supppression orders – here’s a novel idea – as our system presupposes innocence, all names should be suppressed until a verdict. A not guilty would see suppression continue permanently, a guilty would automatically remove suppression, unless for protecting minors.
[DPF: I am delighted you can't force me to pay for your unwanted advertising to me. Bloody thieves]
Vote:December 23rd, 2008 at 9:17 am
The Law Commission is yet another bureaucratic inertia that is sucking up valuable taxpayer dollars. Destroy it now.
Vote:December 23rd, 2008 at 9:20 am
Oh look, dad4justice is here with another very constructive post.
Vote:December 23rd, 2008 at 9:22 am
We are the children of the right and we turned out alright. What happened to you billybunker?
Vote:December 23rd, 2008 at 9:26 am
“We are the children of the right and we turned out alright”
So says the man on a benefit!
Vote:December 23rd, 2008 at 9:27 am
billyborker (76) Vote: Add rating 1 Subtract rating3 Says:
December 23rd, 2008 at 9:11 am
And in order to catch the odd spammer, farrar and co endorsed a law that impinges on my democratic freedom to make contact with people, my ability to promote my business and services. A pox on all those who supported the “Anti-spam laws”!
Democracy gets the blame for a lot of things. Where, in any definition of democracy, does it say you have a right to impinge on my right not to receive spam. A pox on all spammers, their relatives, offspring and turkey flocks! I am buying a specific quantity of bandwidth each month and you are NOT invited to consume any of it for me.
Vote:December 23rd, 2008 at 9:28 am
“So says the man on a benefit!”
Wrong big blouse. Can you please email me dad4justice@gmail.com thank you. Sort this out for once and all.
Vote:December 23rd, 2008 at 9:29 am
$100k is bugger all. I reckon he should have been put into stocks, where people can throw rotten vegetables at him.
Public humiliation is under utilised in our justice system.
The only reason spammers exist is because one in every 1000 spams is sent to a sucker who buys that viagra. Those caught purchasing from spammers should be identified and listed in the local newspapers.
Vote:December 23rd, 2008 at 9:42 am
Actually, D4J’s view is shared by many in the legal profession. Many see it as a bit of joke, mostly given over to justifying government policy.
My own view is that the Law Commission does do some very good research, but often it is focussed on the ends the Commission wants to achieve, rather than on a purely academic outcome.
“I find it difficult to obey the law, because I don’t know what information has been suppressed”
You are not alone, DPF. The print media has the same problem. The solution for them is often to randomly approach lawyers leaving the relevant courtroom to ask what was suppressed! The more professional ones tend to head to the Criminal Counter at the Court Registry Office to ask. The problem is that doing that is always difficult if you are not in the court precincts.
But I have to agree that this problem is not going to be an easy one to solve. Fortunately, there appears to be only a small group of jurors who do this. Just disappointing that it is in such a big case such as Dixon.
Vote:December 23rd, 2008 at 9:45 am
But see:
- http://www.laws179.co.nz/2008/12/act-of-canned-ham.html
Vote:December 23rd, 2008 at 9:49 am
Thank you Frank for reiterating my genuine concerns over the effectiveness of the Law Commission. I am still waiting for various “recommendations” to be implemented after the LC’s Dispute Resolution in the Family Court ( Report 82) March 2003!
Vote:At least the legal fraternity acknowledges yet another bureaucratic white elephant and the negative karma’s indicate the point is touchy.
December 23rd, 2008 at 10:11 am
I’ve never understood the suppression order reasoning.
Our justice system is based around a trial in a court. Anyone can attend that court hearing, see the defendant and witnesses, and hear what they say.
Back in the old days of small villages and townships everyone knew everyone, and so if a person was a habitual thief, then everyone knew it at their subsequent trials.
The introduction of suppression orders all over the place is a useless and ineffectual process introduced because of some smelly lawyer who says that “my client is such a thieving prick that there’s no way he can get a fair trial since everyone knows he’s a thieving prick”. Seems stupid
Vote:December 23rd, 2008 at 10:18 am
billyborker – “… my ability to promote my business” ie spamming. A viagra merchant is merely promoting his business. Possibly the spamming laws may be a bit too widely couched which is leading to some paranoia among those who do mass emailngs which would not generally be regarded as spam. In Atkinson’s case it is quite possible that he indirectly employed the services of hacked ‘zombie’ computers belonging to innocent people to push his messages out. In any case it seemed that his spam used false headers which is a serious aggravating factor.
“… impinges on my democratic freedom to make contact with people.” There is also the democratic freedom of being able to avoid contact.
The realistic issue is whether the law is being applied with common sense eg hitting people like Atkinson or whether the agency is chasing after organisations mailing to a few tens or a few hunderd people only and not over-doing it with regard to size or frequency of emails. In this regard, a link to a web site is preferable to an attachment.
Vote:December 23rd, 2008 at 10:23 am
Fines are better than nothing but really this fucknuckle should be in jail getting unsolicited bulk deliveries of a whole different kind
Vote:December 23rd, 2008 at 10:24 am
The internet only gag orders strike at the presumption of the equality of process. Introducing a bias against a given media opens the door to other differentiation, such as orders against the radio but not the television.
As for prejudicial information remaining on the web long after it has ceased to be current news, surely the law commission isn’t suggesting that all current news about a given crime is prejudicial to the defendant? If it was prejudicial now it should have been prejudicial then? And the less said about retrospective suppression orders telling news sites to yank certain items long after they have been reported the better.
Vote:December 23rd, 2008 at 11:59 am
mttcalph – At the time of a crime there is a ‘trade off’ between the right for the public to know and the right to a fair trial. Prospective jurors may read or hear about the crime then but as they are unaware they might be on a jury would not give it much attention and forget the detail. In pre-internet days the average juror would need to be highly motivated to research then contemporary news articles regarding the accused, but nowadays a few flicks of the mouse would quickly turn up this information including comments on blogs etc.
While ‘stuff’, ‘nzherald’ etc could block access (or searches) to such articles during the course of a trial, the genii is probably well and truly out of the bottle with regards to overseas based sites. That is unless an oppressive internet regime is established – things do seem to be heading towards this spurred by noble objectives such as squashing child porn through to raw political expediency.
Now that judges brief jurors about the relevant law at the start of a trial (I do not know if this is always done) this should remove an incentive for jurors to try and look up the law on the internet. A jury attendant found internet printouts of law in a jury room, this being of concern as it was based on American case law which has greatly diverged from NZ or even British case law.
A big problem of the jury system is the ‘sanitising’ of evidence presented to a jury. In some cases such matters may be bitterly argued pre-trial or even in ‘chambers’ (ie the jury sent to the jury room) at the start of or during a trial.
Vote:December 23rd, 2008 at 2:58 pm
Best sanitizer is sunlight. So let the light be placed upon the information. It goes automatically back to courts and lawyers hiding or suppressing or not imparting full knowledge in an attempt to “win” at court. Put all the information on the table in an open manner so it can all be accessed and discussed and better decisions will be made.
Vote:I thin its Norway where all letters written to parliamentarians are up for view unless of person nature and why not here. Would be quite interesting.
December 24th, 2008 at 2:23 am
“We are the children of the right and we turned out alright”
So says the man on a benefit!
One should be very careful when throwing stones in glass houses!
The way things are going big bruv ..You .. along with other countless thousands may very well be standing in a line with your hand out.A future that will definitely affect you and yours and people you know around you.A future that will wipe that shit eating grin off your face.
Vote:January 3rd, 2009 at 7:39 pm
aardvark – who are you comparing us to? The US? Our use of supression orders is I’m pretty sure similar to the usage in many commonwealth realm countries, i.e. Canada, the UK, Australia etc. We do have quite a different system from the US where their love for the first amendment means these are regarded as undue limitations on free speech.
Vote:January 3rd, 2009 at 7:47 pm
One thing I’ve noticed people seem to miss is there are suppression orders for a variety of purposes. In this case, were talking about temporary supression orders while a trial is ongoing to prevent information unduly prejuducial reaching the jury. These are not intended to be permanent and therefore don’t really impigine on the publics right to know, only the public’s right to know right now. Permanent suppression is sometimes used to protect victims, to when a person is found not guilty or perhaps most controversially when a person is guilty but it’s considered they would suffer too much from the information being revealed. The last one is a lot more rare then a lot of people think.
Vote: