Rob, Rambling - A lot of things interest me...

The Guardian’s report on today’s acquittal of the founder of the Oink.cd music file-sharing website of conspiracy to defraud contained the above sentence.

Similar claims were made on an earlier version of the story on the BBC News site, although that has now been amended. The Daily Mail repeats the claim, which was made in court by the prosecution lawyers, as do The Independent and The Times.

What strikes me is that although the case has finished, and that the defendant has been found not guilty, all of the media coverage is heavily skewed against him. That this claim by the prosecution is not challenged in any media coverage (save for the BBC’s re-write) is astounding, considering that it is factually untrue.

I was a member of Oink for a long time, and was still a member when it was closed down upon Mr Ellis’ arrest. I didn’t give a penny to that website, yet was able to send out many, many invites. I earned my invites by maintaining a good ratio of uploaded data versus downloaded, not by paying.

Yes, you could make a donation to the site, and this did entitle you to send out invites to others, but it was never a pay-to-invite website. All that was necessary was being disciplined in not gorging on the vast amounts of music in front of you, and to share back as much as you downloaded.

For such a supposedly important case (the Daily Mail claims that it was “He was the first person in the UK to be prosecuted for illegal file-sharing”, whereas he was actually prosecuted for conspiracy to defraud, as the copyright infringement accusation didn’t even make it to court), it genuinely amazes me that reporters have not challenged this claim at all.

It really doesn’t take a lot of effort to google “oink donations invites” and read the reporting on the case by websites that cover the digital rights/torrents beat in depth as their raison d’etre. They have hundreds of comments from people that used the website, and can correct the prosecution’s [deliberate?] mistake.

Fuck it, if the media wants to speak to a normal user of oink.cd, who can tell them how it actually functioned from a user’s perspective, email me or get me on Twitter.

That so many newspapers have all been unable (or unwilling) to challenge this simple fact, on which much of the prosecution case seems to have rested, is for me a sign of the budgetary pressures infecting the media industry. Evidently there was only one reporter in court, a Press Association stringer, and all of the media’s reports seem to be based off that.

This reporter is only repeating what has been said in court, as is his duty. But when his material is put onto the wires and re-written by “journalists” in the big media companies, they don’t take the time to fact-check it or really add any additional material. Thus errors go uncorrected and are ingrained in the background material of the case.

These re-writers are supposedly technology or communications specialists, and yet all they are doing is parroting the prosecution’s arguments. There is a need for critical analysis in this kind of thing, not just mindless “churnalism”, as Nick Davies coined it.

You know, every day when I read the news, on whatever website or in whichever newspaper it may be, I see more and more evidence of the creep of bad journalism, of a lack of critical thought on the part of the journalist writing the story. It pains me to see it, because journalism is so important, and is capable of so many good things.

Good journalism can bring down governments, it can correct some horrific wrongs, and it can highlight injustices. But when it is reduced to churning out material, quickly, it loses that ability to be a force in society, and other powerful entities (be they government, pressure groups, or companies) can get their voice heard too often and too unfairly.

Yet again, I’ve used a piece of news to criticise the media’s coverage of it, but it’s the only way to really illustrate these kinds of points.

The Guardian has been gagged from reporting parliament, in what is a truly shocking case of just how invasive libel law has become in the UK. Pre-emptive injunctions are being handed out ever more often, and what is worse is that these injunctions are commonly so sweeping that the publisher is not even allowed to report that he has been served by an injunction.

Private Eye had a really good piece on this in their last issue, but with fate being as it is I threw my copy out this morning at the office, and they don’t publish online. It was a damning editorial against the use by the powerful of these sweeping injunctions, and of the judiciary’s willingness to issue them.

The tactic commonly used by lawyers (apparently) is to call a judge late at night who doesn’t specialise in libel law, and obtain the injunction pretty much through obfuscation. Then it becomes very difficult for the publisher to defeat this injunction, particularly in a timely fashion. The story then dies, unless the publisher rigorously pursues it.

In this particular case, it’s even more notable because British parliament is exempt from libel law. Anything said by a Member of Parliament in a parliamentary setting is given absolute privilege, which means it cannot be libellous. When a newspaper reports these words, it similarly cannot be sued for libel/defamation, under what is called qualified privilege, if it reports those words accurately and fairly.

So by granting this injunction, which means that The Guardian cannot report something that is in an official publication of the Houses of Parliament, the judge has pretty much overturned centuries of precedent. It truly is troubling.

For those wondering what the question is, Guido is forthcoming. This is one of those areas where the internet really shows its worth. Information simply cannot be contained in the modern age. It leaks out, no matter how many holes you try to plug and cracks you paper over.

EDIT: One of the commenters on Guido’s blog has posted the series of parliamentary questions posed by Paul Farrelly which the Guardian is banned from reporting.

The first question concerns Private Eye magazine, as Pressdram Ltd is their publisher. This is a case that Private Eye won a couple of months back, after fighting heavily against an injunction that they were served with by Michael Napier. He is (was? I forget) a barrister who was massively criticised by the Bar Association for failing to declare a pretty hefty conflict of interest, and then sought to hide the publication of the report into his actions.

Private Eye got wind of it, was going to run a small piece on it, but then Napier managed to get this injunction against them. Private Eye, to their credit, fought back, and eventually got the injunction lifted. They then went absolutely to town on Napier, and essentially left his professional career in tatters, which I feel is right for someone who tries to cover up their wrongdoings.

The second question is the one that apparently the injunction has been taken out on against the Guardian. Given the two companies involved, I’m hardly surprised. Trafigura has just paid out a huge sum of money as a result of a toxic waste dumping scandal in the Ivory Coast, but still refuses to admit liability. I think the Milton report referred to is one that points the finger at them, and that they are attempting to hush up, but I might be wrong.

The third and fourth are more on the background of this kind of injunction, and how common they are used. By their very nature, if the media is unable to report on even the existence of an injunction, never mind by whom it was served, then how are we to know how common it is?

Kudos to Paul Farrelly for submitting these questions, and I hope we get answers soon, and are allowed to report them.