The Angry Exile: Teh interwebs are so confusing

The Hangman

Into our town the Hangman came,
Smelling of gold and blood and flame.
And he paced our bricks with a diffident air,
And built his frame in the courthouse square.
The scaffold stood by the courthouse side,
Only as wide as the door was wide;
A frame as tall, or little more,
Than the capping sill of the courthouse door.
And we wondered, whenever we had the time,
Who the criminal, what the crime
That the Hangman judged with the yellow twist
of knotted hemp in his busy fist.
And innocent though we were, with dread,
We passed those eyes of buckshot lead --
Till one cried: "Hangman, who is he
For whom you raised the gallows-tree?"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
And he gave us a riddle instead of reply:
"He who serves me best," said he,
"Shall earn the rope of the gallows-tree."
And he stepped down, and laid his hand
On a man who came from another land.
And we breathed again, for another's grief
At the Hangman's hand was our relief
And the gallows-frame on the courthouse lawn
By tomorrow's sun would be struck and gone.
So we gave him way, and no one spoke,
Out of respect for his Hangman's cloak.
The next day's sun looked mildly down
On roof and street in our quiet town,
And stark and black in the morning air
Was the gallows-tree in the courthouse square.
And the Hangman stood at his usual stand
With the yellow hemp in his busy hand;
With his buckshot eye and his jaw like a pike
And his air so knowing and business-like.
And we cried, "Hangman, have you not done
Yesterday, with the foreign one?"
Then we fell silent, and stood amazed,
"Oh, not for him was the gallows raised."
He laughed a laugh as he looked at us:
"Did you think I'd gone to all this fuss
To hang one man? That's a thing I do
To stretch a rope when the rope is new."
Then one cried "Murder!" and one cried "Shame!"
And into our midst the Hangman came
To that man's place. "Do you hold," said he,
"with him that was meant for the gallows-tree?"
And he laid his hand on that one's arm.
And we shrank back in quick alarm!
And we gave him way, and no one spoke
Out of fear of his Hangman's cloak.
That night we saw with dread surprise
The Hangman's scaffold had grown in size.
Fed by the blood beneath the chute,
The gallows-tree had taken root;
Now as wide, or a little more,
Than the steps that led to the courthouse door,
As tall as the writing, or nearly as tall,
Halfway up on the courthouse wall.
The third he took -- we had all heard tell --
Was a usurer, and an infidel.
"What," said the Hangman "have you to do
With the gallows-bound, and he a Jew?"
And we cried out, "Is this one he
Who has served you well and faithfully?"
The Hangman smiled: "It's a clever scheme
to try the strength of the gallows-beam."
The fourth man's dark, accusing song
Had scratched our comfort hard and long;
"And what concern," he gave us back.
"Have you for the doomed -- the doomed and Black?"
The fifth. The sixth. And we cried again,
"Hangman, Hangman, is this the man?"
"It's a trick," he said. "that we hangmen know
For easing the trap when the trap springs slow."
And so we ceased, and asked no more,
As the Hangman tallied his bloody score.
And sun by sun, and night by night,
The gallows grew to monstrous height.
The wings of the scaffold opened wide
Till they covered the square from side to side;
And the monster cross-beam, looking down,
Cast its shadow across the town.
Then through the town the Hangman came,
Through the empty streets, and called my name --
And I looked at the gallows soaring tall,
And thought, "There is no one left at all
For hanging, and so he calls to me
To help pull down the gallows-tree."
So I went out with right good hope
To the Hangman's tree and the Hangman's rope.
He smiled at me as I came down
To the courthouse square through the silent town.
And supple and stretched in his busy hand
Was the yellow twist of the hempen strand.
And he whistled his tune as he tried the trap,
And it sprang down with a ready snap --
And then with a smile of awful command
He laid his hand upon my hand.
"You tricked me. Hangman!," I shouted then,
"That your scaffold was built for other men...
And I no henchman of yours," I cried,
"You lied to me, Hangman. Foully lied!"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
"Lied to you? Tricked you?" he said. "Not I.
For I answered straight and I told you true --
The scaffold was raised for none but you.
For who has served me more faithfully
Then you with your coward's hope?" said he,
"And where are the others who might have stood
Side by your side in the common good?"
"Dead," I whispered. And amiably
"Murdered," the Hangman corrected me:
"First the foreigner, then the Jew...
I did no more than you let me do."
Beneath the beam that blocked the sky
None had stood so alone as I.
The Hangman noosed me, and no voice there
Cried "Stop!" for me in the empty square.

Maurice Ogden

Thursday, 17 February 2011

Teh interwebs are so confusing

More evidence that some people in positions of authority have absolutely no idea how the internet works. On this occasion it's Supreme Court here in Oz.

NEWSPAPERS, including the Herald, have been ordered to remove old articles from their websites after a court ruled they might interfere with a fair trial.
The decision, one of the first of its kind, came after lawyers for three accused men argued jurors might develop prejudice by reading any of 10 selected articles.
The Supreme Court yesterday ordered the removal of these reports from the online sites of various newspapers for the duration of the trial over the death of the former drug dealer Terry Falconer, due to start next week.

Which of course will completely sanitise the whole internet, yes? Oh, except for Google Cache, obviously. And anything else outside Australia. And probably quite a bit inside Australia that's too much trouble to track down. But apart from that there won't be a mention.

But the decision has no impact on thousands of other internet hits for the names of one or more of the accused - Anthony John Michael Perish, Mathew Robert Lawton, and Andrew Michael Perish. The court heard a Google search last month found 6930 references to the name of one of the men on Australian sites alone.

Probably more than that now that there will be a heap of articles on the suppression of previously published articles. And you can be sure that people will look them up out of curiosity for what it is that's being suppressed. Streisand effect, anybody?

The order was imposed even though jurors will be told not to look up the case on the internet or discuss it with anyone.

Okay, it's right that jurors should be told this and doing so deals with them like adults. Censorship is sending a message that just to be on the safe side the court wants to make sure nobody eats cookies by putting the jar on the top shelf, and if everyone is really good there will be cookies later. Except of course there are cookies literally everywhere and moving the contents of one jar has a pretty negligible effect on availability and possibly a negative one on the willingness to cooperate. So why even do it?

Carolyn Davenport, SC, the barrister for one of the accused, had argued that a juror might inadvertently speak to someone who had read one of the articles online, and the court needed to protect them from ''events that put their integrity to the test''.

Hello? Ever hear of the Streisand Effect?* Yes, a juror might have happened to speak to someone who'd read one of the articles, and now they're probably even more likely to speak to someone who's read a copy or précis or comment or blog because you're drawing attention to it by getting the original 10 articles censored. And protecting the jury members from having their integrity tested? You idiot. For one thing it doesn't offer any such protection when all you've achieved is to censor ten articles and draw attention to the fact there are thousands more out there, and for another you may have just given the jury the impression that you and/or your client thinks they can't be trusted. I wouldn't presume to tell you your job but if you were representing me I'd be hoping you'd say and do things to win the jury over, not tell them that we don't trust them. I'd be wondering how many jurors might be thinking to themselves, "I wasn't going to look but fuck it, now I'll have a peek just to work out what it is they don't want me to see."

Justice Derek Price agreed and said the court had the obligation to do whatever it could to protect the integrity of the process. ''The confidence in the integrity of the jurors does not mean the court should not protect them from incidents that put their integrity to the test,'' he said.

Of course the court must make sure trials are fair but ask yourselves if the censorship of ten out of thousands of web pages actually achieves that, particularly when the only people who are being ordered to remove pages are in a position to make the whole censorship order itself very, very public.

Last week, the chief executive of News Ltd, John Hartigan, called for an end to ''the nonsense'' of take-down orders. ''They are unnecessary and ineffective … the modern equivalent of burning books,'' he argued.

I'd have said just one or two books while leaving the same content available on whole shelves.

The barrister Dauid Sibtain had argued the orders were unnecessary and the media organisations should not be in a position ''less favourable'' than others who had posted material.
The orders ''lacked practical utility'' because other copies of the article may remain online, but Justice Price rejected this.

For why?

Justice Price said the inability to remove all offending material did not mean the removal of the articles outlined would be futile.

What? How the hell do you work that out? Look, it's been explained to you:

n IT expert, Nicholas Klein, had told the court material could be republished on other websites. The only way to make the stories unavailable for people searching for them, he said, would be ''to remove every single one from the internet''.
...
[Cameron Murphy, president of the NSW Council for Civil Liberties] said orders against internet publication appeared to discriminate against the internet because courts never ordered ''the removal of a microfiche from every library in the state''.

With that in mind surely at best this achieves nothing due to the sheer amount of material that remains. And it might do more harm than good due to the possibility that the censorship will put the question in peoples' minds: what are we not supposed to know, prompting them to try and find out.

How can it not be futile unless you believe can trust the jury not to go looking through all the other pages that can't be taken down or to pay attention to anyone else who has and mentions what they saw? But if you do trust them then you could also have trusted them with the ten removed pages still there in the first place.

* Actually that'd make a good movie title.