Mr nobody blogger get in shit for writing a critical restaurant review, no can do… American idol judges are allowed to slam contestants … that’s entertainment. Double standards? What if a respected chef had written a review of the restaurant, expressing his or her opinions?
Man, this even made the headlines back home…
I don’t think people are thinking too highly about Taiwan in other countries right now…
And there’s still no freedom of speech, but there’s another country that comes to mind when I say that phrase, so it just isn’t Taiwan. You are definitely right that courts are applying it unreasonably, but it doesn’t change the fact that you really have to be careful of what you say and do here.
You can see how bad it is by just watching the daily news. You’ll see just how many people are taken to court for complete BS reasons. Taiwan has basically become a place where you CANNOT say or do anything that is in the least bit negative. It’s becoming one big circle jerk.[/quote]
Of course there is freedom of speech. People have to remember that it is not the government going after citizens here for speaking their mind. These are ordinary people suing each other. While it isi certainly chilling in one sense, it is not by any means authoritarian. taiwan is not sliding into China.
The problem is the same one we’ve been seeing for years: poor training for judges and prosecutors accepting cases that have no merit. I recal years ago when I was going to take a publisher to court that my lawyer advised me that even if I won, the publisher could turn around and sue me for damaging their reputation (because I had proven they were crooks would of course be repuitation ruining). Most judges wouldn’t listen to such a case, she said, but some would and that the problem.
Nutty place.
[quote=“twjl”]Went through the court proceedings. Apparently one of her co-workers testified that the blogger said the restaurant looked kind of dirty, but tasted alright. This was too much of a contrast to “tasted really bad, unsanitary, there were cockroaches” so the judge concluded that the bad things she said about the restaurant is most likely just a way for her to get back at the restaurant owner for the traffic argument.
[…]
Also, note that there was NOTHING in the blog or in the court summary about saltiness.[/quote]
[quote]And a few posts down here is her actual post (her blog was deleted)
[…]
Only the last few sentences talked about the food and it seems like this is the second time she’s been to the restaurant. She says it’s dirty, the food is bad, and the owner is “evil.”
And I also can’t seem to find anything about the “saltiness” of her food, but it’s late at night and my Chinese reading ability is still a work in progress…[/quote]
So it seem this is not related to that story from a few months ago that someone claims to have read about but a case of shoddy reporting and rumour mongering related to a more recent case - but with more of the facts available now, i can’t help but think that the energy used to generate this storm in the teacup on Forumosa could have been much better applied to uncover such idiotic things as the food disparagement law in Texas and the other 12 states that have such a law. After all, should we not hold the bastion of freedom to a higher standard than a not-quite democratic country in eastern Asia? 
It made the UK’s most successful tabloid online.
dailymail.co.uk/news/article … salty.html
I wonder how they managed to prevent any cockroaches when the health inspector visited?
No red envelopes of course.
That would match the level of the court of public opinion on Forumosa, no? 
Wait. Are you trying to say Taipei Times reported something incorrectly?
Really?
Nah. They have the standards of Fox News. No way could they mess up.
Square pizza sucks.
It seems more people in forumosa need to either 1) learn to read chinese, or 2) Dont trust facts posted second or third hand on forumosa
^ and 3) don’t let their personal biases affect how they see to the news
to the people who say that bloggers per se can write whatever they want and nobody should touch them - you’re off. politics, philosophy, etc…blog on. rant rave. do whatever. when it comes to criticisms of a person’s business, there needs to be a basis for the criticism.
if i have a restaurant and some unhappy nutter with a blog writes a scathing review with no basis in fact because she (or maybe he) doesn’t like the cut of my jib or the color of my double-parked car, then i ought to have legal recourse against her (or possibly him).
a great many people look for new restaurants or want to read about place X in blogs. a few nasty reviews could spell doom.
now if your place does blow, then it blows. if someone samples a few dishes and writes 'based on the dishes i sampled, you should look elsewhere for culinary delights", that’s fine. if the person comes in and orders a hamburger for which they don’t care, they ought not to write that everything on the menu is crap.
Another blogger in trouble?
Following on from the restaurant is a cockroach criticism can I say a certain newspaper is like toilet paper because they can’t get the the judicial sentence straight and that is actually a suspended sentence.
Or is this one of those classic ‘Chinese thinking’ phrases, a bit like somebody commited suicide but is still alive .
^ Agreed, until I can see the actual Chinese source, I’ll reserve my judgement from now on
It’s only my opinion, but I think this thread is devolving away from the spirit of the problem, i.e., devolving into the nuances.
Debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin was instructive in its time, but that time was long ago.
That was then, this is now.
Here’s my summary (so far), subject to correction, of the spirit of things:
a blogger ranted or vented
the recipient of the blogger’s rant was offended
a prosecutor took up the side of the recipient
a judge decided, and punished the blogger
Please feel free to correct my current observations!
[quote=“IYouThem”]It’s only my opinion, but I think this thread is devolving away from the spirit of the problem, i.e., devolving into the nuances.
Debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin was instructive in its time, but that time was long ago.
That was then, this is now.
Here’s my summary (so far), subject to correction, of the spirit of things:
a blogger ranted or vented
the recipient of the blogger’s rant was offended
a prosecutor took up the side of the recipient
a judge decided, and punished the blogger
Please feel free to correct my current observations![/quote]
The answer is 3. 3 angels can dance on the head of a pin.
Bones: I admire your surgical precision in determining that “3” is a correct answer. Sadly, I need further explanation. 3?
Saw this on a blog yesterday.
mykafkaesquelife.blogspot.com/20 … urant.html
If it’s true, then what was reported in the media is not even close to what really happened.
I read through some of it and other than the irrelevant background info it didn’t seem that his account is so different. The main issue is that prosecutors are accepting such a frivilous case and that defamation of this nature is a criminal offense. All the blather of Confucianism and cultural relatavism misses the point that this is unfair, and serves no public good.
[quote=“cfimages”]Saw this on a blog yesterday.
mykafkaesquelife.blogspot.com/20 … urant.html
If it’s true, then what was reported in the media is not even close to what really happened.[/quote]
The details were wrong, certainly, but the main thrust wasn’t. A woman was successfully sued for disparaging a restaurant on her blog. And the comments on that post read like a Forumosa thread.