Following my usual practice of getting round to the news a while after it was news, I’d like to draw your attention to two current abuse of law* affecting bloggers that may be known to you.
Firstly Anna Raccoon bring us news of a European Arrest warrant issued for the arrest of Graham Mitchell for muder in Portugal. No evidence was supplied as European arrest warrents don’t require evidence nor even to tell you particularly why you’ve been arrested, you know minor details like who you’ve allegedly murdered that sort of thing. Which may be rather relevant as it seems that under a European arrest warrant you can likely be deported for the presumed murder of someone who’s blissfully unaware of their own demise.
The second case is far closer to home (well for me at least) an involves the ever politely spoken blogger Olly Cromwell. It would seem that certain powers would like him to be subject to a restraining order preventing him from mentioning any of a certain list of cunts that may or may not work for Bexley council, regardless of if he’s found innocent of harassing them. The particularly scary bits of the order are as follows:
“Please find attached a copy of a draft Restraining order which the Crown intend to apply for at the conclusion of these proceedings be it a not guilty or a guilty finding”
and
” For the purposes ofprotecting the persons listed in the Schedule attached to this order from HARASSMENT *********** is prohibited from:
1. Causing any statement to appear on the internet which relates to any person listed in the said attached schedule. For the avoidance of doubt this includes continuing to allow a statement made to remain on the internet.
2. Approaching, contacting or attempting to contact any person listed in the attached Schedule.”
So unless the order is a tad more limited than that he’s now arguably responsible for anyone anywhere calling the various cunts in Bexley council the miserable cunts that they are. As it does say allowing such statements to remain on the internet, not on his blog(s), not on sites he runs or anything like that but “on the internet”.
I do recommend going to both Anna’s and Olly’s blogs to get the full sorry stories of both these cases.
Oh and normal non-sweary blogging will resume, just it seemed terribly wrong to report on Olly’s predicament without using his favoured term of endearment for our glorious council members.
“For the avoidance of doubt this includes continuing to allow a statement made to remain on the internet.”
– Here we go again! Holding people in the UK responsible for what other people do online. Its similar to the smoking ban enforcement – you can be liable for not preventing someone else from committing the proscribed act. It’s insane. This precedent went the other way in the U.S. (in a case against Craigslist IIRC) where it was decided that the web host / site admin was NOT responsible for other people’s comments or posts.
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