The reason I haven’t suffered detective Horton’s fate is due to a steadfast refusal to cover matters which reflect on taxi network shortcomings, much to the chagrin of driver advocates and activists. That’s a shit fight I happily leave to those better informed on industry matters. Also, fortunately, such issues bore me to tears.

Rather my primary focus is on passengers, their stories and behaviour. Here I avoid legal blowback by altering or obscuring their identifying details.

Plus I recognise that cab passengers have an expectation, rightly or wrongly, of anonymity, despite taxis being public vehicles. Fortuitously this is easily accomodated as the essence of my narratives generally don’t rely upon identity, per se.

Whilst this policy has so far has kept me out of trouble, I’ve bookmarked your important post for possible future reference, just in case! Thanks.

Great blog, by the way.

I think the folks you quote make some good points.

Really, the philosophical underpinnings that result in whistleblower legislation ought to apply to bloggers. (Mind you, public-sector whistleblowers don’t always fare terribly well, despite the supposed protections in place. The Law Report discussed this last year: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/lawreport/stories/2008/2447026.htm.) If posts are illegal, malicious, defamatory or otherwise unwarranted, the legal system provides a mechanism to remedy that.

But if bloggers — and especially public-sector bloggers — want to disclose the truth to the public, then they ought to be both free to do so, and to do so with their anonymity protected.

That would be the case if they went to another public sector authority, such as an ombudsman. And the rationale for that protection supposedly provided by whistleblower provisions is the public interest in encouraging people to come forward and disclose improper conduct in public authorities.

So why shouldn’t the same reasoning apply when that same public interest is served by direct disclosure to the public?

I hope we don’t see Australian courts follow the same path.

Tally-ho, old chum!

I did actually agree with the ruling in the Mosely case, FWIW; it just seems that he’s gone far beyond that, into the realm of policing utterances.

I must say that in my days as a solicitor, I commenced action against someone who had published an article which was very critical of my client. But the author wasn’t a blogger, rather it was a contributor to a site which (very ironically) purported to give professional advice how to minimise conflict in business, from recollection. I guess the author of that piece scored an epic fail in that regard.

The issue for my client was that the first thing which came up when you plugged the client’s name into Google was this highly critical piece, which of course was how the client came upon it (after one of the client’s customers did a search and was horrified to discover this piece – so tipped them off).

Perhaps that explains the aggressiveness of the company towards your friend? I really think one should tread a little more carefully with lay people (and the solicitor should have negotiated for your friend to take the post down as a term of settlement if that’s what the company wanted). Going in boots and all is hardly going to make your friend feel better about the company! Really they should have informally apologised to her, negotiated with her to withdraw the article and sent her a dozen bottles of wine to apologise for the misunderstanding…that way, they might get a actually get a very positive post about their customer service out of it. That’s a win-win way of dealing with it. All too often lawyers go in in a way which puts people off side.

“Michael Noonan is seeking $250,000 in damages from Gary MacLennan and John Hookham, of Queensland University of Technology’s (QUT) film and television school, over an article they wrote in The Australian newspaper in April 2007.

The article was about a TV comedy featuring two people with intellectual disabilities, which Mr Noonan had written as part of his thesis, Laughing at the Disabled: Creating Comedy that Confronts, Offends and Entertains.”

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25659633-12332,00.html

But no doubt it will be old news by the time my post gets fished out of moderation in 2016. ;(