Digging deeper into the Harmful Digital Communications Act

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My own experience now with Netsafe and the Harmful Digital Communications is well explained on this Blog with Netsafe recently attempting to secretly censor a political blog on this site.

I was so surprised to learn that a jumped up NGO with state backed powers could censor political blogs because i remember this legislation was supposedly inspired by the Roast Buster case and a desire to stop cyber bullying on social media.

It turns out the Roast Buster example was actually a smokescreen adopted by the promoters of this legislation rather than because of it…

…so this law had nothing to do with Roast Busters or trying to stop cyber bullying, it was and always has been a law designed to shut down opinion online which defamation laws couldn’t.

I think any incoming Government needs to urgently check the powers granted to Netsafe as a State sponsored censor and recalibrate those to where there are actual problems. Allowing a state backed censor to secretly attempt to censor legitimate political opinion online is a god damned outrage that no one in a  free society should tolerate.

I have not yet been contacted or informed by the District Court that I have to appear to defend this bullshit charge, if I am called, I will ensure you all know what the content they are attempting to censor is and ask you to spread it as far and as wide as you can.

TDB Recommends NewzEngine.com

They might take us down, but they can’t take all of you down as well.

4 COMMENTS

  1. this is the thin end of the wedge…towards a totalitarian fascist state designed to cover up all sorts of misdeads …and undermine democracy and accountability and free speech

    who put this Act together?

    can you not give us some sketchy hints as to the things they are so sensitive about that they wish to censor/hide it …despite there being existing laws for defamation, libel, slander etc

    …we are all adults here…this is NOT the Catholic Church

  2. This was Hitler’s strategy as he would create a phoney incident to force government change so this Junta are just repeating this strategy now, and this makes them questionable.

    We are all being spied upon now without this regime telling us honestly now.

    They (Nactional) are the enemy against the people now, and should be thrown out of power this September!!!

  3. It is likely that any immediate action by the plaintiffs will be to

    1. Ask the court for a take down order.
    2. Ask the court for a name suppression order

    Neither of these require that you are informed by the court until after they are granted as they are both supposedly for a pending civil action.

    Whoever is the presiding judge, only has to be satisfied that:-

    1. There is a prima facie case that could be made (note it doesn’t have to be a winnable case).
    2. That Netsafe has been involved and has decided that they couldn’t mediate a solution.

    Now I am of the opinion that Netsafe are completely failing in their duties under the HDCA (see below).

    But I’d suggest that you lodge an immediate request for a hearing and/or injunction to either prevent those court orders from happening or to rollback those court orders if they are presented to you. Probably the latter, as it isn’t that likely that the mischievous litigants will want to get more legal pain into their lives.

    But Netsafe are more of a longer term problem. I suspect that I might expend some effort and time (when I have some available) to bring them or their employer (the MoJ) into a court so that the courts can determine some working procedures for them

    Netsafe are required by the Act to consider the Bill Of Rights Act when considering these complaints. In my view they do not consider it to be anything apart from a nuisance rathe rthan a fundemental part of NZ law. Instead they appear to completely take the part of the complainant rather than doing the job specified in the HDCA.

    Your reaction to their intervention was in essence a BORA statement, which they have clearly ignored.

    Similarly, their approach asks to set aside parts of the Privacy Act and site privacy policies. They appear to seek contact with unspecified persons for purposes that are not clear and for reasons that are not specified. In short, they don’t give enough information to system operators to decide what should be done under the various provisions of the “safe harbor” section.

  4. “They might take us down, but they can’t take all of you down as well.”

    Absolutely Martyn.

    The Natz Stormtrooper agency NATZsafe will have one hell of a battle on its hands, if it attempts to take TDB down!

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