Enterprising captain's blog
In his landmark 1995 book, Being Digital, Nicholas Negroponte talks about the world moving from 'atoms' to 'bits'. Atoms are the way information used to be transmitted - in the form of newspapers or books. But soon, all information will move in the form of digital bits, which have no colour, size or weight. They travel at the speed of light, across borders, respecting no rules. It is already under way.
But nobody told Canadian judge John Gomery. Last week, he imposed a publication ban on some explosive testimony that was being heard at an inquiry into a government scandal, in which officials are said to have channelled millions of taxpayers' dollars through friendly advertising agencies in Quebec, and then demanded kickbacks and favours for the party.
Within hours, the testimony was leaked to a 42-year-old stay-at-home father living just across the border in Minnesota. His name is Ed Morrissey. His friends know him as Captain Ed. Mr Morrissey is a fan of Star Trek, and he also runs a popular website - a web log, or blog - called Captain's Quarters. He does not know much about Canadian politics, but he is always looking for juicy material. So, he decided to publish it on his blog. Within days, his site had received 400,000 'hits', or visits - mostly from Canada.
Judge Gomery woke up to a new world, shrugged and lifted the publication ban. And a political firestorm began. There was a day when governments, judges and lawyers could suppress information through a combination of force, threat and moral persuasion. The 'gatekeepers' of news were relatively few, and they could often be persuaded.
But now the bloggers number in the millions, they are hungry for content, and some of them take their queue from the 18th century philosopher Jeremy Bentham, who said: 'Publicity is the very soul of justice.'
But most bloggers are not crusaders. They just exult in the heady freedom of the technology. And the Gomery Inquiry is by no means the first time that the internet has frustrated a Canadian judge. In the sensational mid-1990s murder trial of Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka, the judge imposed a gag order but a US website published the horrific details of the couple's killing spree, and anyone in Canada could read them.
One criminal lawyer told The Globe and Mail: 'Instead of running from technology, the courts should learn to live with it, and embrace it.'
Some call this new phenomenon 'citizen's journalism'. Others call it swarming. Anyone with a desktop computer can join Captain Ed in the blogosphere. They might even have a hand in helping to topple a government.
