Well, again its been a while since I've posted, but there's a lot going on, in general. It was sad to learn of the death of Terri Schiavo and J2P2, a.k.a. Karol Wojtyla. The papal funeral is on Friday at 4 a.m. our time, and it is said that some 2 billion people will be watching...

This post is my observation that there seem to be many free speech issues in the works.

The most interesting one, I think, is the massive financial scandal that is currently threatening to bring down the Canadian government. The way I understand it, tremendous amounts (in the hundreds of millions of dollars) were spent by the Liberal Party (the governing party in Canada) on non-existent advertising projects. A majority of this (tax-payer!) money was kicked back by the advertisers to the Liberal Party, which used it as campaign funds, among other things.
Witnesses are being questioned, and a publication ban has been placed on their testimony. There is a fear that if these details get out to the public, finding an impartial jury to try these witnesses will be impossible.
An American blogger, at Captain's Quarters, is receiving summaries of the witnesses' testimony, and is posting this information on his blog. His summary of events so far is here. (The April 2nd entry is a good place to start reading.)
Canadian sources who have linked to this American blog may be dragged into court, accused of violating the publication ban.
The Canadian bloggers have become so afraid, many won't even refer to the Captain's Quarters blog by name!
The scandal has been dubbed AdScam, and a very long list of blogs discussing AdScam can be found here.

JP's signature in his email is something like, "Information wants you to pay me a dollar," which is a spoof of the classic line, "Information wants to be free."
Wretchard of Belmont Club, in examining AdScam, has some thoughts I found interesting:
"My own view is that as the world becomes more dependent on information, the cost of purposely maintaining error grows ever higher. It is becoming too expensive to maintain an elaborate lie. The effort necessary to maintain apparent consistency with verifiable information simply grows to high too be worth it."

Other free speech news includes the possibility that the Federal Election Commission may regulate blogs with regard to political speech (relevant article in the National Journal: 'Blog Swarm' Stings the FEC) and the proposed regulation on blogs by the city of San Fransisco (Instapundit notes this here and here). In addition, the Supreme Court is hearing arguments about peer-to-peer file sharing systems.

Interesting times, these.
- posted by Christoph Roggenkamp @ 4/05/2005 01:28:00 PM