Me on Sky News talking about the anonymity of Baby P's killers 7
Posted on
September 02, 2009 by
Malcolm Coles
I went on Sky News a couple of weeks ago to talk about the publishing of Baby Peter's killers' names on the internet - despite the court order banning naming them.
It took me about 2 hours of ripping, converting and crashing, but here I am (RSS readers: click through to the site to see it). Beware, I have a massive head. And I was in a pitch-black remote studio staring into a bright light, hence why I seem to be staring fixedly ahead ...:
Tighten the law and censor the internet? Good luck with that.
Well, that's happening right now in Germany. Needless to say that pretty much everybody is upset and nobody likes it to happen eventually. Let's see how the elections later this month may affect this issue.
Jason: I didn't say it was easy. But there are things that could be done in cases like this where the prospect of a fair trial is put at risk.
It was noticeable in the Alfie Patten case that many medium and bigger sites did pull the paternity test results. The only reason Google News didn't was that it was never sent the court order. The same is no doubt true of facebook.
Here's one of the facebook groups calling for the parents of baby P to be beaten to death. They haven't even identified the culprits right - it was the mum and boyfriend. The dad was innocent: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=34619438214
Right, it isn't easy... it's organisationally difficult, and technically impossible. Because of this the argument to tighten the law is academic.
"The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." - Philip Elmer-DeWitt
Malcolm! You look - and sound - like a politician! I think you should run for MP of Hackney.