On 23/06/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/23/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/23/06, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
This is a surprising interpretation of the Rehabilition of Offenders Act 1974, given my well-thumbed copy of Law for Journalists devotes an entire chapter to warning readers to be careful about it. I'm not saying it is impermissible, but there are certainly some legal strictures involved.
As always, I'm glad wikien-l is not a forum for legal advice.
Well there is some fairly solid stuff about how you are allowed to get hold of the information.
However if we look at say: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/3025035.stm
If I've read the act correctly the conviction became spent over a year ago. Yet the BBC is still publishing that to people within the UK.
a) You will note that I did not say "you cannot ever publish this material". You just need to have a good reason to. I would not place my money on all occurences in Wikipedia being good.
b) Bound over to keep the peace is spent one year after the binding expires, assuming no recidivism, and that article says nothing about how long he was bound over for.
c) Now's the fun part. That article is clearly in an archive and can be proven* to have been untouched for three years. That simple fact opens up huge new vistas of legal questions, and nobody knows what the answers to any of them are...
This field is complex. I don't know what I'm talking about, but I recognise that fact. I would be really quite grateful if you did the same.
* the BBC, bless them, archive every single alteration made to their site at commitment, so you could prove this if you had to