Streaming TV, court findings on hold

"O Canada, we stand on guard for thee!" In this case, Canadians are standing guard for the rights of an alleged serial murderer, whose attorneys believe that Internet reportage from the U.S. could sway potential jurors. And in other north-of-the-border news, Canadian regulators have stomped out the idea of startup companies streaming TV shows over the Web, without compensating copyright holders.

The first case is the sensational trial of Vancouver-area pig farmer Robert Pickton, who stands accused of murdering at least 15 prostitutes (almost 50 more remain missing). Judge David Stone recently admonished online reports in The Seattle Times, as well as an AP report that ran on numerous American sites, for giving details about a videotape of Pickton played during a pre-trial hearing. The judge threatened to ban the reporters from the courtroom if they disobeyed his order, but Seattletimes.com's online producer Lucy Mohl told Wired News that she would evaluate the order on a day-by-day basis.

As the Canadian media try to keep the swarm of interest over the trial to a minimum, Wired News' Charles Mandel wondered about international access to trial information in the media age. "Is a judge realistically going to believe he or she can restrict readership in this day and age based on region?" Mohl told Mandel. "They're looking at either shutting out all media or understanding we're in a different world."

The same could be said for Canadian regulators, who decided that new startups based in Canada like IcraveTV.com could not use a loophole to broadcast Canadian and American shows online without permission. The decision is a no-brainer for those concerned about online copyright protection, but doesn't address the growing peer-to-peer networks such as Kazaa and others that trade in everything from video to photos to music to computer programs.

In other words, the Canadian establishment can try to keep online journalists muzzled, and try to keep unauthorized TV broadcasts off the Net. But in a changing world, restricting online content by geography or by one country's copyright code could become a thing of a past age.

Meet the new Slate; same as the old Slate

Fair warning: Before there was ever a F---ed Company site, I started a satirical site called DeathRace 2000 in 1997 to see which of three online sites -- Snap Online, HotWired or Slate -- would die first. Snap, of course, ended up as the "winner," but Slate always seemed like the one ready to bite it. Microsoft doing serious journalism? An online Web zine headed by a print guy in Michael Kinsley?

Funny that I didn't realize that Slate's real strength was in a new form of journalism birthed by the Net: meta-journalism. The form is similar to weblogs, but simply consists of one writer finding a series of stories on one topic, further being distilled for readers in summary form with commentary. The pioneer was Slate's Today's Papers, and I helped start another one, The Industry Standard's Media Grok e-mail newsletter. Sure, Slate has gone through some rough times and business models (free, pay, then free again), but Richard Byrne argues in The Boston Phoenix that the e-zine has had a "measurable influence on Web journalism" with its pre-blog blogs.

All good and true, I must now admit, but one part of Byrne's nice deep look at the history of Slate touches on one unnerving point. The e-pub has had to grapple with two high-profile hoaxes by freelancers -- one purporting to do "monkeyfishing" and the other a fake diary from an auto exec. Are they now relenting and trying to fact-check stories independently? Nope. Instead the editors stick by the frugal idea of having writers fact-check their own stories, a bad practice that has caught on in too many online newsrooms.

How many hoaxes will it take before online outlets lose all credibility?

Note: This column will be on hiatus until next Tuesday, January 28. From then until early April I will be working from Thailand, giving you the same commentary, with some added Thai flavor.