Pleased with name supression changes

The Justice & Electoral Select Committee has reported back the Criminal Procedure Bill, and I am pleased that the submissions around the Internet and name suppression have been listened to, and agreed to.

The three main changes for bloggers and other content hosts are:

• S214 changed so non-traditional media have standing to appeal or amend a suppression order
• S215 gains an exemption from liability for content hosts who do not themselves break a suppression order
• The entire s216 is deleted which set up liability for content hosts unless strict criteria were met

Basically what they have done is that instead of creating a new offence of breaching a suppression order online, they have merely said liability “does not apply to a person who hosts material on websites or other electronic retrieval systems that can be accessed by a user unless the specific information has been placed or entered on the site or system by that person”.

So in terms of these sections, I’m pretty happy with the changes.