Bahamian Internet users may have to think before they blog after police confirmed that they are looking into the question of whether some so-called bloggers could be sued over their online content. Chief Superintendent Marvin Dames said police are investigating whether those using online diaries – known as web-logs, or “blogs” – to make controversial comments could be liable for prosecution.<\/p>\n
The investigation follows a complaint made by a member of the public to officers at the Central Detective Unit about comments made about him and his company on a blog.<\/p>\n
As it stands, bloggers worldwide have relative free rein in using their sites to make any kind of comments they see fit – flattering or defamatory – about anyone.<\/p>\n
This is in part due to the nature of the Internet – for one thing, anonymity is relatively easy for bloggers to maintain, making it difficult for them to be tracked down.<\/p>\n
The global nature of the Internet also brings up questions of who is responsible and under what jurisdiction.<\/p>\n
The explosion in the popularity of blogging has been heralded by many as a great advancement for free speech, and something which has an important contribution to make to healthy civil society.<\/p>\n
It is said that if the liability of bloggers were increased, their capacity to serve this function would diminish.<\/p>\n
However, others argue that it would protect those whose reputations have been unfairly tarnished by online comment.<\/p>\n
By ALISON LOWE, The Tribune<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In keeping with the Bahamas government’s continued attempts at censorship, Bahamas police are investigating whether bloggers can be prosecuted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10223285771444175_51037792744":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-243508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243508\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}