FC: A reply to American Boychoir School tries to censor critical site

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

Previous Politech message:
http://www.politechbot.com/p-04667.html

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From: Tim Meehan <tim () ocsarc org>
To: declan () well com
Subject: Re: FC: American Boychoir School tries to censor site alleging 
sexual abuse
Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2003 12:24:02 -0400
Organization: Ontario Consumers for Safe Access to Recreational Cannabis
In-Reply-To: <5.2.0.9.0.20030422104559.01cd7108 () mail well com>

Declan:

This tactic sounds very familiar...although a better tactic would have been to
leave the site alone, because now *everyone* knows about those allegations (and
will likely patroize the choir accordingly)!

About ten years ago, in Canada, there was a lawsuit to prevent the airing of a
fictional miniseries, "The Boys of St. Vincent," which was loosely based on
documented abuse of children by Roman Catholic priests.  The priests got a
publication ban to prevent the airing of the program, but this was appealed all
the way to the Supreme Court, which threw out the ban.

Interestingly, out of it came one of the strongest decisions against prior
restraint of controversial speech ever issued by the Supreme Court -- and
clarified that the right to a fair trial (the ostensible reasoning for the ban)
and the right to free speech are on an equal footing.

Dagenais v. Canadian Broadcasting Corp., [1994] 3 SCR 835

http://www.lexum.umontreal.ca/csc-scc/en/pub/1994/vol3/html/1994scr3_0835.html

-Tim
--
Tim Meehan, Communications Director
Ontario Consumers for Safe Access to Recreational Cannabis
tim () ocsarc org * http://www.ocsarc.org * 416-854-6343




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