By Simon Shephard
An Auckland judge has delivered a blunt message to bloggers - the internet is no place to hide from the law.
The remark by Judge David Harvey came as he dealt with controversial blogger Cameron Slater, aka Whale Oil, an advocate of name suppression law reform.
This afternoon Slater was convicted of illegally identifying several well-known New Zealanders whose names were suppressed by court orders.
Afterwards Slater remained defiant, and describing the fine he received as a wet bus ticket.
He is still convinced that breaking suppression orders was the right thing to do.
"Have I ever changed my behaviour for anything?" he asked reporters this afternoon.
As for whether he will continue to break suppression orders, he said: "We will wait and see."
Slater faced 10 charges of outing high profile New Zealanders on his blog. His lawyer argued he didn't break suppression orders as he used pictograms and binary code when putting the names online - but Judge Harvey said it was still illegal.
"The fact that the information was in code matters little," he said.
Judge Harvey also ruled that blogging was a form of mass media which is not above the law.
"It is publication, it is made to a wide audience. It goes beyond a private conversation over the telephone, or a coffee table, or at a dinner party."
Slater was found guilty on nine of the 10 charges, and the judge didn't believe it was just a political crusade.
"You set yourself up as judge and jury, knowing that those names were the subject of non-publication orders, yet you were willing to flout the law none withstanding."
The maximum fine is a $1000 per charge. Because of the deliberate nature of the offending, the judge fined Slater $750 plus court costs for each offence - a total of almost $8,000, which Slater later described as a"slap on the wrist with a wet bus ticket".
Another blogger, David Slack, also says the fine is not much of a deterrent, and Slater maintains his crusade is not over.
"I don't start things generally, but I finish them, and I am not finished yet."
Slater says supporters are helping pay for his court costs, and he is considering an appeal.
3 News