Sponsor's Message

No, there won't be wildly distracting Flash animations, skyscraper ads, pop-up, drop-down, fall-out -- blow-up windows and menus; or any such fluffery.

The ideal of "less is more" will remain but the extra content and some embracing of more modern standards (such as CSS) will hopefully make the site not only more attractive but more interactive and useful.

Those who have submitted ads for free rotation will hopefully start seeing a little more traffic to their websites and I'll have to get up even earlier in the mornings to keep it all ticking over.

Now have your say Got something to say about today's column, or want to see what others think?  Visit The Forums While you're here, why not visit the Aardvark Hall of Shame and perhaps make your own nomination. 7

And speaking of benefiting from an Aardvark presence, I'd like to congratulate this site's former sponsor (IHUG) on their win in the Netguide Awards. Funny thing is that when I went to the Netguide Website this morning, I could see absolutely no mention of the awards... go figure!

Of course we all know that a huge number of the votes that IHUG got came from Aardvark readers and their win was a direct result of their sponsorship :-)

Who will win next year I wonder?

Death to free speech!
Once again it would seem, the power of the courts to suppress information has been blown all to hell by the Net and those who use it.

In two recent cases, information that was not supposed to be public knowledge has effectively been disseminated with impunity by those with email and web access.

Evidence suppressed in the Louise Nicholas case has been widely spread by way of email over the past few days. Some messages contain an almost verbatim copy of the leaflet handed out by Nicholas supporters and others are simply paraphrased versions of the same.

This latest flouting of the law is just another in a long list of cases where suppression orders have proven to be totally impotent.

Last year it was the identity of Marc Ellis and Brent Todd as those involved in a "celebrity drug scandal", the sequel to which has been the recent admission by Lana Coc-kroft that she was also mentioned. Sorry Lana, we already knew this ages ago.

If you go back far enough, you'll also find the case of an American millionaire businessman who got done for dope possession but, by offering to hand over a fist-full of dosh to a local charity, got his name suppressed by the courts.

Within hours, many overseas online news sites had published the man's name, and quite legally -- because they were not bound by the rulings of an NZ court.

Following that there was the identity of the police officer involved in the Waitara shooting of Steven Wallace -- again, that information was circulating within hours thanks to the Net.

Right now the rule of law is under threat from these blatant breaches and I strongly suspect we're going to see the government, police and courts getting pretty snotty about that.

Look out for some greatly increased penalties for breaking suppression orders (currently just a $1,000 fine) and one or two people to be used as examples of what can and will happen to those who flout the law.

Will this change people's behaviour and their seemingly unstoppable desire to gossip? Hell no -- they'll just be a little more careful how they do it.

Just as the word-processor killed carbon-paper and the car killed the horse and cart, the Net has already killed information suppression.

Free Advertising!
Yes, while I sort out the issue of sponsorship, I'm offering loyal Aardvark readers the chance to have their venture advertised for free on these pages.

If you send me your 150x150 banner (no more than 20KB) and a URL to point at, I'll put it in a rotation to appear in the area currently allocated to sponsorship.

Because of my government-imposed state of impoverishment, I won't be charging for this exposure and there's no obligation to anyone -- but neither are their any promises ;-)

Drop me a line if you'd like to take advantage of this.

Did you notice
As eagle-eyed readers will have noticed, sponsorship of this fine blog/column is up for grabs.

Those who have already made enquiries about sponsoring Aardvark should hear back from me this week - and anyone else who might like to do so should drop me a line ASAP.

Tell us all and see what others have to say in The Aardvark Forums

If you feel that this is a good thing and/or you hold a "geniune affection" for yours truly -- then you are welcome to gift me some money using the buttons provided. In gifting this money you accept that no goods, service or other consideration is offered, provided, accepted or anticipated in return. Just click on the button to gift whatever you can afford. NOTE: PayPal bills in US dollars so don't accidentally gift more than what you were intending :-)

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