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NZ Judge Bans Online Publishing of Accuseds' Names

Posted by timothy on from the a-bit-arbitrary dept.

The Master Moose writes "A judge in New Zealand has banned the press from reporting online the names of two men accused of murder. The names of the men will be allowed to be reported in print as well as through Television and Radio broadcast. It would seem he has taken this step to prevent someone 'googling' these peoples names in the future and finding them linked to a crime if found innocent."

2 of 219 comments (clear)

  1. What's the point? by haltenfrauden27 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Ok, so the judge banned the press from doing this. But it's impossible to stop some random person (probably not even in New Zealand) from posting this information online. Sounds like maybe this judge needs to think a little harder about how the Internet works.

    --
    Catch telemarketers
  2. Re:Good job that a judge has raised this problem by robfoo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yes, but 'anyone at all' doesn't have the weight of a newspaper or other 'reputable' source behind them.
    I think the Judge has a pretty interesting idea here - of course the names will end up on the internet, but only in blog posts and such..

    For instance, if I was to google 'HungryHobo' and saw within the results a blog post saying "HungryHobo's mom is a crack whore", I'd probably disregard it.
    However, if I saw an article in the online version of an established dead-tree newspaper headlined "HungryHobo's mother implicated in drugs-for-sex scandal" then I'd be more inclined to believe it.

    However I'm not sure what would happen if a number of blog posts or other websites published the names along with links to articles about the case - google's page rank may effectively tie the names to the articles!