Friday, September 16, 2005

Blog and be Damned!

There has been much discussion circulated on the internet about the legality of blogs during the New Zealand elections.

There is no clarity in the law around blogging. What the law does preclude is blatantly partisan political messages being distributed on election day.

In reality, there is nothing that can be done to prevent electronic media from discussing politics; as far as I can see, there is no moratorium on even partisan messages on blogs.

I figure the same rules apply to New Zealand partisan politics as applies to New Zealand defamation law: messages written in New Zealand, by New Zealand-based bloggers, for a primarily New Zealand audience, are subject to the law. Whether I am personally liable for even defamatory messages made by others on my blog is not clear.

The messages to my blog would need to be clearly partisan in order to be subject to a law that has never been tested. For partisan, I suggest the test would probably be the same test that is applied to expenditure on promotional activity for party political purposes, under the Electoral Act.

I'm not going to be bothered with blogging on tomorrow--but I think the Electoral Office would be pushing shit uphill if it attempted a prosecution against a blogger under the Electoral Act.

Blog and be damned, you limp-wristed fuckers!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Logic will win through: simply take the children to the bastions of socialism and show them the results. Then take them to the contra places, and show the difference. Kids are inherently greedy little buggers, but they are not that dumb that they can't see the obvious.

the only problem with this theory are all the doo gooder (doo as in poo- because thatis what the country ends up in as a result of their antics) upperclass ladies who lunch, who decide to go green or something else as lame, because they feel so sorry for the poor, and are trying to impress their galpals with their kindly nature. Fucking patronising behaviour, and the poor really hate those types of people. Don't believe me, ever seen Helen on a bus? Or do you expect Sue Kedgely to have a feed of fish and chips on the floor in front of TV in Cannons creek/flaxmere/ruatoria etc? Not a shit show.

DenMT said...

Yeah, take your kids to Sweden. Socialist nightmare.

Imagine if New Zealand ended up like that?

Anonymous said...

It's gone strangely quiet over here in La La land. Is that because the hangover is too bad, you're still in denial, or because you've already fucked off to whatever free-market banana republic you have as your bolt hole? Come on, we're all waiting for your biting wit and sharp analysis.

Rob Good said...

You get arrested in the last week? WTF are you?