RUSSELL BLINCH: The birth of a digital gag order http://www.nando.net/newsroom/ntn/info/060197/info9_24276.html Copyright =A9 1997 Nando.net Copyright =A9 1997 Reuter Information Service TORONTO (June 1, 1997 2:02 p.m. EDT) - For the Canadian digital nation, the election of 1997 was almost a sideshow to a growing cyber scream of protest over a government's attempt to gag "improper" campaign Web sties. The Canadian election, not unlike the U.S. election last year, was from the start a most wired affair. A myriad of sites, personal, satirical, and corporate sprang up with a wealth of news and background on the federal election. You could begin with the self-described "The Mother of all Canadian election Pages" or tap into Yahoo Canada's site to get a taste of some of the offerings. The election was called 18 months early by Prime Minister Jean Chretien's Liberal government and all the polls showed the party would sleep walk to a second consecutive parliamentary majority in the June 2 election. But some issues did manage to get in the way -- taxes, gun control and the old Canadian standby of Quebec separation -- and these were debated on the Net and out on the hustings. In the U.S. election that swept President Clinton back to power there were signs that the Internet played a role and helped to challenge the noise coming from the more traditional sources of newspapers and broadcast stations. Jon Katz wrote in Wired's April 1997 issue that during the U.S. election he saw "primordial stirrings" of a new kind of a political nation, a Digital Nation. "I began to feel I was witnessing a birth -- the first stirrings of powerful new political community." In the Canadian election, however, the debate on the Net was increasingly focused on the country's electoral laws as enforced by Elections Canada. People were most enraged by two big issues: that no one could produce campaign material without saying who sponsored it and that 72 hours prior to the election no one was allowed to publish results of a new or old opinion poll. [73 lines left ... full text available at <url:http://www.reference.com/cgi-bin/pn/go.py?choice=message&table=06_1997&mid=918741&hilit=CENSOR+CENSORED> ] ---------------------------------- Received: from shadowfax.reference.com (shadowfax.reference.com [207.105.31.27]) Article-ID: 06_1997&1000277 Score: 88 Subject: TPDL