[p2p-research] Fwd: Article : Crowdsourcing the law

[Michel Bauwens]

thanks Dante! greets from stockholm, in marilyn's place ...

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Dante-Gabryell Monson <dante.monson at gmail.com>
Date: Sat, Sep 11, 2010 at 5:54 PM
Subject: Article : Crowdsourcing the law
To: Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>


http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2010/09/crowdsourcing_t.html

Crowdsourcing the law
*Natalie Solent (Essex)*  Civil
liberty/regulation<http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/civil_libertyregulation/>
 • UK affairs <http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/uk_affairs/>

Wrapped up in some fairly predictable lawerly laments about Thatcher's
Cameron's
heartless cuts in legal aid there is a fascinating examination of the rise
of the crowd-sourced legal advice website here: Tricks and cheats are the
price of culling legal
aid<http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/sep/05/legal-aid-self-representation>

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/sep/05/legal-aid-self-representation

Motoring trials are more frequently now defended by people who are making
use of public special-interest websites such as PePiPoo<http://www.pepipoo.com/>

( http://www.pepipoo.com/ )
which give advice to motorists both prior to and during a trial. Some advice
is sound, some not so sound, but with the capacity to share approaches to
defence has come the temptation in forums to share advice which, if
followed, would result in a miscarriage of justice.

and

In some ways sites like these are a good thing: mass participation to help
individuals to establish their legal rights is laudable, but to the extent
that they encourage bad-faith practices, and ultimately provide tools to
undermine the already buckling justice system, they are a serious problem –
a price to be paid for legal aid cuts. The insatiable demand for help with
litigation has given rise to websites on which anyone can offer their
opinion on the law whether it is correct or misleading. In those
circumstances it's the individuals in need of help who will lose out,
running trials on a hiding to nothing, which will leave them worse off than
when they started.

The author, the barrister Rupert Myers, whose articles for the *Guardian* are
usually more friendly to civil liberties, concludes that "the government
must find ways to curb the spread of tricks and cheats, while replacing
these sites with the benefit of reliable help for those that need it." I
suspect the call to replace these open websites with government ones is his
professional self-interest talking. It does not matter. The government
cannot replace these websites. Oh, they could find some legal grounds to
close down these particular ones, PePiPoo (weird name) andChild Support
Agency Hell <http://www.csahell.com/>, and "replace" them with government
information website number four million and six, which rather fewer people
would trust on account of the legal advice being sought in these cases being
advice on how to legally fight branches of that same government. But unless
the government is willing to censor the internet to a degree hitherto
unprece- OK, better stop there for fear of giving 'em ideas.

As I was saying, now we have the internet people are going to discuss their
problems on it, including their legal problems. Other people are going to
give them advice. Have you noticed that about the internet? Rather sweet, I
always think; the only thing people like doing on the internet more than
talking about sex is advising others on everything from plumbing to
childbirth for no reward. Of course some of the advice you get from
unqualified strangers is bad. That, however, has also been known to be true
of advice from qualified professionals.



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