'Jail threat' in blog probe

Here's another instance that shows how often complex (and little known) legislation may impact on the activities of bloggers, as reported in the Daily Telgraph and flagged up by Martin Stabe. It begins:

The Charity Commission has warned an online blogger he could go to jail unless he submits information he has gathered about the activities of the Smith Institute, the left-wing think tank under investigation for links to the Labour Party.

The formal direction was issued to Paul Staines, who runs the Guido Fawkes political website, ordering him to release documents relating to the institute by Friday.

Comments

[KevO]

This points up one significant issue of citizen journalism. If a bloger working alone or informally with like-minded others gets into this kind of bother, who do they turn to for help?

If they worked for a paper or broadcaster, a story might have been "legalled" before publication. That could, of course, mean the sort of stories on Paul's blogs might be vetoed -- which is why people like Paul are so valuable for ignoring such strictures.

But it might also mean that Paul and his ilk cannot benefit from a bit of tweaking by media-savvy lawyers which turns something actionable into something perfectly legal, without losing its main points.

And if after publication big and rich media groups are faced with legal problems and particularly defence of freedom issues, they will typically stump up the money to fight their corner hard, at least in some instances.

How about the Pauls of this world, though? If they wish to fight, who pays? And if they don't fight, then there's likely to be cave-in after cave-in of brave bloggers who find that to stay out of jail they have no choice but to surrender documents and other information. And cave-in after cave-in is likely to translate to precedent after precedent which will make it hugely harder for media groups to keep the snapping lawyers at bay.

[sam wilcox]

A update on this story may be the news today that an eqyptian has been sentenced to four years for writing against Islam and the Egyptian leader on his blog. Such occurences could prove to be the dark lining to web 2.0's silver cloud.