Breaching Publication Bans

April 5, 2005 at 11:10 |

It’s no secret now that there have been explosive recent developments at the Gomery Commission. What is a secret (but only to Canadians) is what those developments are. A U.S. blogger with an inside source has reported on the developments, and (at least) two Canadian newspapers have now reported on the blogger’s story.

Quite apart from the issue of the propriety of a publication ban, there’s a ‘net issue that’s bugging me -

I read both of those newspaper’s stories. Each of them provided enough information to allow me to find the blog with Google within about 15 seconds - two articles, two searches, Google #1 rank both times. A 10 year old could have done it (faster, probably).

Is it a breach of a publication ban to (coyly) provide enough information to allow someone to quickly, cheaply and without any effort at all find a foreign publication that is not abiding by the ban?

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One Response to “Breaching Publication Bans”

David Akin (1 comments.)
April 6th, 2005 at 18:03
Hey Rob — you’re the lawyer, you tell us! :)

Seriously, though, this is a really good question. Talking to my colleagues on the Hill, they are being told by their media lawyers not to provide the name of the American blogger because if you type his name into Google, he’s the first hit. That led us to wonder if any Canadian jurist has ever taken a subject’s Google rank into a account when making any kind of civil law judgement. I don’t think so, but it sounds like an interesting area of tech law!