Whale’s trial

Tv3 have a live blog of proceedings at Whale Oil’s trial. Well not quite live, as Judge Harvey has placed a ten minute delay on tweeting and reporting, in case evidence has to be suppressed.

Judge Harvey is probably the Judge who is the most knowledgeable on Internet issues. I’m not sure if he volunteered for the trial, or was given it as punishment 🙂

Some extracts:

Judge Harvey describes Whale Oil’s blogs as like a shotgun blast, it hits the person and then other people he doesn’t want to hit.

Heh, not a bad analogy.

Mr Slater is sitting at the back of the courtroom; wearing his usual white long-sleeve shirt with dark blue sleeves. He is bearded, arms folded and watching the trial unfold with apparent nonchalance. He writes the occasional note on his hands but remains impassive.

Heh. I look forward to seeing the TV.

Ms Murray asks him about articles he posted about the Olympian. He says he wrote an article about celebrity name suppression and said he published some pictures to go with the article for ‘interests sake’. He says they were ‘interesting pictures’ and says people have had guesses at what they meant. He says ‘they could mean anything’. It was one image that contained four images. He says he doesn’t believe the Olympian should have name suppression because he is a ‘violent criminal’. He says he understood that no one was able to publish his name, age or occupation. He says he did not mention his occupation nor his age nor his name. He says he quoted from the NZ Herald and put up a random image – ‘you can take it anyway you want’.

The court judgement will be very interesting.