technoculture203-09

There was a very interesting story coming out of the UK this week. Essentially the legal representatives of a multinational organisation attempted to gag the Guardian newspaper from reporting that a member of parliament had asked a question about the company in parliament. This a law firm with quite a reputation representing a large and powerful corporate entity, to the point that there was no hesitation in trying to supress one of the things we are surely entitled to, which is to hear what our elected representatives are saying on our behalf. Thankfully the experts at the law firm seemed to fail to take into account the role of blogs and Twitter. To cynics it will come as no suprise that multi nationals, seeking to bypass issues of rules and regulations in pursuit of profit, will apply whatever pressure is deemed necessary to disrupt critics, no matter how legitimate. What is gratifying about this story is that new media technologies enabled a defense of free speech in real time, and enabled legitimate criticism to take place. So in this case the strategy of suppression has completely failed, but the practices that led to criticisms of the company are now more widely disseminated than before the attempt at gagging the press.