By The Way...

To arms! A cheeky Australian judge is trying to purge the Internet!

A Supreme Court judge has called for the internet to be purged of any material likely to prejudice a trial, to prevent jurors conducting their own investigations into cases they are sitting on.

Justice Virginia Bell, of the NSW Supreme Court, told a conference in Darwin of Supreme and Federal court judges from across the country yesterday that the ready availability of archived press reports on the internet could jeopardise the trial of an accused person.

But her call was branded "silly and unworkable" by the media union, while the internet industry said it would be impossible to police offshore sites.

Exactly. The entire point of the Internet is that it's decentralized -- a handy feature harkening back to the days when it was a US Defense Department computer network designed to withstand a nuclear attack -- and material can be accessed in servers on all seven continents (yes, there are computers in Antarctica. They're just very cold). Unless the world wishes to submit to Australian rule -- and that doesn't seem likely -- an Australian judge seems unlikely to be able to enforce her ruling any place other than her own country. And you know, I'm okay with that.  This is another case of a little knowledge (in this case, about how the Internet works) being a dangerous thing.

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