Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

U.S. Blogger Breaches Canadian Publication Ban

Posted by timothy on from the how-you-like-them-apples dept.

nnet writes "The Toronto Sun is reporting that a U.S. blogger has been breaching a Canadian publication ban on AdScam. While The Sun hasn't given the URL for the blog itself, in fear of a contempt of court charge, this isn't the first time an American has breached a Canadian publication ban according to the article." The Sun story, though, does give a nice title for which to search, and this quickly yields the story in question.

3 of 735 comments (clear)

  1. Re:The article... by mopslik · · Score: 5, Informative

    Canada is starting to resemble Orwell's 1984. There are all kinds of things you can't say there now.

    From TFA:

    Gomery slapped a ban on Brault's testimony last week to ensure the Montreal ad exec would be able to find an unbiased jury for his fraud trial set for next month.

    This thing actually happens fairly often up here. In some cases, it's fairly reasonable. In this case, however, it does seem to be a bit over the top, and a stretch.

    A far cry from 1984, though.

  2. Re:Publication bans? On events *open to the public by elsilver · · Score: 5, Informative
    OK, so, here's a little background.

    There is currently a royal inquiry going on into some mishandling of federal advertisement contracts. A royal inquiry is similar to congressional hearings in the US, except this one is not lead by congressmen, but by a retired judge. When finished he gets to report back to parliament on his findings.

    Now, some of the people subpeonaed to give testimony at the inquiry are also being charged with crimes related to the events under discussion. They will go to court in the next several months on those charges.

    The publication ban was put in place to ensure things that these people say at the inquiry will not affect their chances of a fair jury trial. (Compare this to the baseball hearings where they players wanted immunity for their testimony, for many of the same reasons.) The ban will be ended after the jury has been sequestered, at which all that was said during the ban can be made public.

    Note that this is only a publication ban -- it doesn't prevent people from actually going to the hearings to hear for themselves; it just attempts to limit what the jury pool will hear outside of the court case.

    Publication bans are common in Canada, and typically have a similar duration and purpose -- to prevent the jury on high profile cases from getting the "facts" of the case from anywhere but the courtroom. The media typically fight the ban, and often win certain relaxations on the ban (you can report the events, but not identify the person giving testimony, etc.). In this case, Judge Gomery has said the media can ask at the end of each day what of that day's testimony can be released.

    I'm generally in favour of such time limited bans, since they are designed to help ensure a fair trial. However, it looks like maintaining such bans is getting more and more difficult in the era of the Internet. Other cases where Canadian publication bans have been breached by American organizations include the Air India case (IIRC), and the Paul Bernardo case.

    E.

  3. Re:The article... by rumblin'rabbit · · Score: 5, Informative
    Your rant is so grossly ill-informed it's difficult to know where to begin. A few points.
    • Inflation reached it's height in 1981 at about 12.4%, well before the Mulroney era. It was never 18%.
    • The unemployment rate reached its height of about 11.5% in 1982, again well before Mulroney.
    • The Mulroney government spent about as much as it took in as revenue. The high deficits were cause by the high cost of servicing the debt built up by, wait for it, the Liberals.
    • Economists say that the GST is actually far less destructive than the Manufacturers Sales Tax that it replaced.
    And so on. Nice try though.