Previous Politech message: http://www.politechbot.com/p-04667.html --- From: Tim Meehan <timat_private> To: declanat_private Subject: Re: FC: American Boychoir School tries to censor site alleging sexual abuse Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2003 12:24:02 -0400 Organization: Ontario Consumers for Safe Access to Recreational Cannabis In-Reply-To: <5.2.0.9.0.20030422104559.01cd7108at_private> Declan: This tactic sounds very familiar...although a better tactic would have been to leave the site alone, because now *everyone* knows about those allegations (and will likely patroize the choir accordingly)! About ten years ago, in Canada, there was a lawsuit to prevent the airing of a fictional miniseries, "The Boys of St. Vincent," which was loosely based on documented abuse of children by Roman Catholic priests. The priests got a publication ban to prevent the airing of the program, but this was appealed all the way to the Supreme Court, which threw out the ban. Interestingly, out of it came one of the strongest decisions against prior restraint of controversial speech ever issued by the Supreme Court -- and clarified that the right to a fair trial (the ostensible reasoning for the ban) and the right to free speech are on an equal footing. Dagenais v. Canadian Broadcasting Corp., [1994] 3 SCR 835 http://www.lexum.umontreal.ca/csc-scc/en/pub/1994/vol3/html/1994scr3_0835.html -Tim -- Tim Meehan, Communications Director Ontario Consumers for Safe Access to Recreational Cannabis timat_private * http://www.ocsarc.org * 416-854-6343 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ Like Politech? Make a donation here: http://www.politechbot.com/donate/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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