Monday, May 02, 2011

3 hours of censorship in Canada (No Free Speech until 10 pm EST)

Can you immagine this in Canada? Weird right?

Until a few minutes ago, this site was home to a conversation about the role of social media in Canadian elections. It was set up to aggregate the tweets (messages posted to Twitter) that include the hashtag #tweettheresults. That's how people across Canada and around the world have been tagging their reflections on Section 329 of Canada's Elections Act, which severely restricts the transmission of voting results until all polling stations have closed. We hoped that this site would provoke a conversation about Section 329, and raise the profile of the issue across Canada. We think it's done that, both on the social web and in the mainstream media.
But that conversation became illegal at 7 pm EST this evening. Rather than face a potential fine or protracted legal battle, we have taken this site offline for 3 hours. When free speech returns to Canada at 10 pm EST, the site will be back online and you will be able to read all the tweets that have accumulated in the interim.
If you tweet about this situation, please use the hashtag #tweettheresults so it will appear here.
To follow the conversation while this Canadian site is offline, you can still view all the latest tweets by searching for #tweettheresults on Twitter.
We never imagined a day when Canadians would have to use a foreign website to participate in a conversation about our own country. We never imagined that we, Canadian citizens, would potentially face legal penalties for our role in supporting an online conversation. We hope that all Canadians who have exercised their voice at the polls today will reclaim those voices online by asking the next government to bring our Elections Act into the 21st century.

No comments: