EDITORIAL

Editorial: An exercise in futility Published on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 Email To Friend    Print Version On the basis of unofficial reports and other communications received by TCI Net News late on Tuesday morning, we understand that the Supreme Court of the Turks and Caicos Islands has granted an injunction preventing certain named local media houses (the editors of TCI Net News being one of the named defendants) from publishing the redacted text of the Commission of Inquiry’s final report. Further, the named media houses are reportedly enjoined from indicating or identifying any publisher or website where the redacted parts of the report have been published or are otherwise available. As the Turks and Caicos component of a regional media house, we will always try to be respectful of the local courts in every jurisdiction, no matter how unsustainable we may find their decisions and the fact that we are outside of their jurisdiction for service and/or enforcement of any such orders. However, in a good faith attempt to accommodate the TCI courts, we have decided to take down our online article referring to the publication of the unredacted report on another website. We do this in the full knowledge that this is to a large extent an exercise in futility and a vain attempt to put the toothpaste back into the tube after it has been well and truly squeezed out. Apart from the fact that our article would have been read by any number of TCI residents, copies would also have been cached by search engines such as Google. In addition, no doubt anyone with an interest in the report will have already downloaded the unredacted version and will be sharing it with others. Indeed, over the weekend, we received several unsolicited copies of the unredacted report by email. It is therefore going to be a relatively simple matter for anyone that wishes to do so to obtain sight of the report in its unredacted form, either electronically or in hard copy. What then is the point of enjoining publication when it has already effectively been published by parties outside of the court’s jurisdiction and control? Surely, the court should by now have taken a pragmatic rather than legalistic approach. The only people likely to be inconvenienced in any way are TCI residents and even they, with a modest amount of effort, can access the document whose publication is enjoined, regardless of the court order. In the words of our legal counsel, Anthony L. Hall, “Even though this injunction has been rendered plainly moot by the genie being out of the bottle, as it were, and even if the plaintiffs in this case could show proximate harm, it still offends all notions of justice that protecting the vanity and commercial self-interest of three developers has been given precedence over publishing this document of such compelling public interest. The court's ruling is simply untenable." We therefore hope that the court will recognise the absurdity of the situation and immediately vacate the more or less futile injunction.   Reads : 543 Back... Comments: No comments on this topic yet. Be the first one to submit a comment. Back... Send us your comments!   Send us your comments on this article for publication in our Readers' Forum or as a Letter to the Editor. All fields are required and in the interest of openness and transparency we will no longer accept anonymous submissions. We therefore request that all submissions include a name for publication, regardless of content. We will in special circumstances protect a writer's identity only after we have established good cause for anonymity, otherwise we will not be able to publish the submission. For your contribution to reach us, you must (a) provide a valid e-mail address and (b) click on the validation link that will be sent to the e-mail address you provide.  If the address is not valid or you don't click on the validation link, it will be a waste of your time typing your submission because we will never see it! Your Name: Your Email: (Validation required) Comments: Enter Validation Code *