This makes me wonder if Taiwan judges really think they can legislate this place into a nation of well-behaved kindergarteners. To be sure, I haven’t read the review, and hope someone reposts it here, preferably translated (Hey, I’m super busy…), and it may well have been unfair, but it is a bloody restaurant review and the readers are presumably adults, no? Salty is a subjective adjective, so how can the courts object to its usage? Duh, I know. They think in black and white, that is, binary, (reptilian?) terms. Oops, have I said too much? Have I criminally insulted the court judges? Will they find the time to haul my ass into court and “prove” I unfairly defamed them? It wouldn’t surprise me. I’ve been done for equally trivial offenses.
Here is the first bit and a link:
[quote]
Blogger jailed over critical restaurant review
OBJECTIVITY:The judge said the blogger should not have criticized the restaurant’s food as ‘too salty’ in general, because she had eaten dried noodles and two side dishes
By Lin Liang-che / Staff Reporter
The Taichung branch of Taiwan High Court on Tuesday sentenced a blogger who wrote that a restaurant’s beef noodles were too salty to 30 days in detention and two years of probation and ordered her to pay NT$200,000 in compensation to the restaurant.
The blogger, surnamed Liu (劉), writes about a variety of topics — including food, health, interior design and lifestyle topics — and has received more than 60,000 hits on her Web site.
After visiting a Taichung beef noodle restaurant in July 2008, where she had dried noodles and side dishes, Liu wrote that the restaurant served food that was too salty, the place was unsanitary because there were cockroaches and that the owner was a “bully” because he let customers park their cars haphazardly, leading to traffic jams.
The restaurant’s owner, surnamed Yang (楊), learned about Liu’s blog post from a regular customer, and filed charges against her, accusing her of defamation.
The Taichung District Court ruled that Liu’s criticism of the restaurant exceeded reasonable bounds and sentenced her to 30 days in detention, a ruling that Liu appealed.
The High Court found that Liu’s criticism about cockroaches in the restaurant to be a narration of facts, not intentional slander…
MORE AT THE SOURCE - Click the headline[/quote]
I post this here because it personally interests me and I’d like to see it discussed by those interested in Taiwan’s sometimes-surprising legal system. My first instinct tells me this decision stinks because it takes defamation protection way too far into the realm of patently obvious subjectivity. Are the courts really here to protect us from petty complaints by others? Furthermore, think of the chilling effect of such a huge punishment. Outrageous, I say.