| So - according to the bill, anyone with a complaint has to send it to a delegated agency that will be responsible for assessing each complaint. It is there to screen for trivial cases, etc. If there is cause, they can then send it off to a court which will then determine what is to happen. The court can refer it back to the agency for more attempts at mediation etc... before making a ruling. These are all reasonable checks on balances from the point of view of ensuring that this is not abused to censor speech etc. The courts are even instructed to take account of the "intent" of the communicator. So it's not like the nutso feminist-left - with their "intent is not magic" belief - are driving this bill. So from this point of view the bill is actually quite reasonable... Of course, from another point of view - i.e. when you consider the sheer number of assholes on the internet, it remains completely insane. The stated intent of the bill is to provide timely redress to victims. Lol - when hell freezes over. My prediction - The delegated agency is going to be woefully under-funded. As far as I can see in the legislation - it is actually toothless. Any enforcement has to come from the courts. So people will learn to ignore the agency... feed-backing more cases onto the courts which see their time getting taken up because people can't get along on the internet. edit: the problem being that people WILL submit frivolous cases. Lots of them. Victims won't by-and-large get the timely redress promised - except for a couple of high profile cases that make it into the media. And this non-result will come at great expense. But thanks for being the test case NZ... nothing like empirical confirmation of any point of view. |