I’d like to see the defendant take this judgment to the Council of Grand Justices and seek an interpretation. According to Taiwan’s Judicial Yuan, the Justices have the authority to interpret the Constitution and to unify the meanings of laws and regulations and per the Constitutional Interpretation Procedure Act, an individual whose rights may have been infringed upon may petition for an interpretation. There have been several Interpretations published on the issue of freedom of expression.
The English article that got this started states “The ruling [of the Taichung branch of Taiwan High Court] is final.” Not that that means much coming from the Taipei Times, which still hasn’t changed the article to correct its assertion that the blogger was jailed.
[quote=“Charlie Jack”]
It would be nice, and much appreciated–although obviously no one is obligated at all to do this–if someone with a command of Chinese would give us a little help on the judgment(s).[/quote]
There were a few comments in a Reddit thread on this from people who read the original blog and court proceedings, the conclusion from many seems it was bad reporting by the TT. This comment is not too far down the page.
[quote]Edit 2: I found the original blog post as well as the court proceedings. Here’s a quick summary.
The majority of her blog post was about an event in which she saw a double parked car in front of the restaurant, a point she brought up with the driver of the double parked car. Both the driver and the restaurant owner told her that it’s fine, it’s not breaking any traffic laws (when indeed it was) and for her to mind her own business. She threatened to call a tow truck, at which point the driver called her a crazy bitch.
She then made a short remark about how she “ate there before… the food was really bad… but worse of all the place was unsanitary and it had cockroaches.”
During the court proceedings, her co-worker testified that the blogger said the restaurant was “a little dirty but the food tasted alright.” This was in sharp contrast to her statements about the restaurant in her blog, so the judge concluded that those comments in the blog were probably fueled by her anger over the double parked car incident and were made up. Hence, the judge ruled that what she did was slander.
Note that there was nothing about saltiness at all in either the blog or the court proceedings. Stay classy, Taipei Times.[/quote] Taiwan Blogger Imprisoned For Negative Restaurant Review. Fined and jailed for contending the food was “too salty”
Thanks for the info. If it’s not an appeal, does that mean that even if the Judicial Yuan supports the side of the blogger he’s still subject to the Taizhong court’s judgment?
I believe that if the JY Interpretation found the HC ruling incorrect the judgment would be voided… I know… it sure sounds like an appeal… let me try to find a clear answer.
At the time of this posting, Google Translate, Babel Fish, and Wiktionary all translate [color=#000080]鹹[/color] (xián) as “salty.”
In passing, here’s a news video on the matter:
I don’t know Chinese, so I don’t know what to make of the video. And it’s possible that I wouldn’t know what to make of it even if I knew Chinese. I’m just posting it in case it contains anything that anyone finds useful.
I don’t agree that libel should send a person to jail, but if it does, well then it’s the way it is. Don’t submit libelous content online and you won’t need to worry about going to jail. People get years in jail in allegedly more “civilized” nation than Taiwan for carrying drugs. Trashing another person’s reputation online can be a worse crime in some instances, in my opinion.
Charlie Jack, i was not pointing at anybody in particular, i was allowing myself to pass on a general observation to Scott who, like Mick and myself, quite obviously found comments on that other blog he mentioned that put the apparently sensational and partially incorrect report in the Taiwan Times (and in many other foreign media and blogs) in perspective. But a wider perspective is equally apparently the last things many people (not only on Forumosa, mind you) are looking for (in this case or in other cases)…
I agree that a wider perspective is sometimes needed, but there might be more than one wider perspective at work here.
This is from Wikipedia:
[quote]In 1986, Chen Shui-bian was jailed for eight months for libel after his pro-opposition magazine accused, among other things, [Elmer] Fung of plagiarism. His [i. e., Fung’s] argument in court was he merely translated an English book for his Doctoral Thesis. It is translation, therefore not plagiarism. The court ruled in his favor and sentenced Chen Shui-bian to jail for libel.[/quote] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmer_Fung
These are from the Taipei Times:
[quote]A 35-year-old woman is suing her neighbor for insulting her after he called her “Auntie,” it was reported yesterday. [/quote] taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/ … 03432520/2
[quote]Retired Taichung police officer Chen Wen-hsiung (陳文雄) yesterday said he was the one who invited the four [police officers] to meet at [alleged gang leader] Weng [Chi-nan (翁奇楠)]’s office, but denied allegations that he was working for Weng or that he was gambling at the scene when the crime [i. e., the assassination of Weng in the presence of the visiting police officers] occurred.
“That is a malicious lie,” he said. “I will consider filing a slander suit against people who accuse me of what I have not done.”[/quote] taipeitimes.com/News/front/a … 2003474539
[quote]DPP Legislator Peter Lin (林進興) took part in a press conference in Taichung on Tuesday with 12 other doctors to disclose what they said were Taichung Mayor Jason Hu’s (胡志強) medical records.
Eleven of the doctors who joined Lin at Tuesday’s press conference filed lawsuits against the Apple Daily yesterday for defamation and public insult, requesting NT$100 million (US$2.98 million) in compensation. They were angered by the daily calling their act “audacious.”
Dr. Gao Chia-chun (高嘉君), speaking for the group, said the doctors did not know the content of the record in advance and were present at the news conference simply to provide their professional opinions and express concern about Hu’s health.[/quote] taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/ … 2003282444
I agree that a wider perspective is sometimes needed, but there might be more than one wider perspective at work here.[/quote]
Absolutely. And about the issue at hand: it is not difficult to document that there exist some silly laws in Taiwan (i know you appreciate good documentation and don’t just make up your mind on a fact-free whim), and it is also not difficult to document that there exist silly laws all over the world. You can also find people who make use of certain laws in ways that were not intended or envisioned by their framers and that arguably cause more damage to society than the laws were meant to prevent - and again, this is not unique to Taiwan but applies to anywhere in the world.
Knowing that Taiwan is not unique when it comes to silly laws is no reason to ignore such laws or even pretend they did not exist - on the other hand, none of that negates the fact that we can find plenty of accurate, sensationalist, or outright false reporting as well as many unfounded/unsupportable opinions (inlcuding hasty generalisations and judgements) - both in the mainstream media and on BBSs and blogs…
I agree that a wider perspective is sometimes needed, but there might be more than one wider perspective at work here.[/quote]
Absolutely. And about the issue at hand: it is not difficult to document that there exist some silly laws in Taiwan (I know you appreciate good documentation and don’t just make up your mind on a fact-free whim), and it is also not difficult to document that there exist silly laws all over the world. You can also find people who make use of certain laws in ways that were not intended or envisioned by their framers and that arguably cause more damage to society than the laws were meant to prevent - and again, this is not unique to Taiwan but applies to anywhere in the world.
Knowing that Taiwan is not unique when it comes to silly laws is no reason to ignore such laws or even pretend they did not exist - on the other hand, none of that negates the fact that we can find plenty of accurate, sensationalist, or outright false reporting as well as many unfounded/unsupportable opinions (inlcuding hasty generalisations and judgements) - both in the mainstream media and on BBSs and blogs… [/quote]
Yeah, there’s a lot of crazy doings in my home country. But they’re crazy doings that I’m used to.
A lot of my internal life here is just a lengthy process of learning the mental and emotional ropes. And even if I had a way to assay everything–if I could put everything in some kind of centrifuge–and if I found out from the assay that things are actually better for me here on balance than they were back home, there’d still be a process of getting used to things.
A lengthy process:
[quote=“Satellite TV”][quote=“Skyfae”][color=#0040FF]I will be coming to Taiwan next month and I just wanted some opinions on adjustment. How long did it take you all to adjust to living in Taiwan? If at all…
Satellite TV is also a naturalized citizen of the ROC.
A long time ago, one of my uncles (now deceased) told me, “Any job you have, there’s going to be something you don’t like about it.” I would say that in my case, the same kind of principle applies to places of residence.
My problem with all this is that much of the debate was started by the original TT article. If an accurate understanding of the case had been available from the start, I doubt much of what was said in all this would have been said. In the course of this thread, it’s been pointed out that the original TT article contains errors in translation from the Libetry Times article, as well as factually irregularities about the event. But by then, everyone’s on record about where they stand on all this. What would have been said if you knew from the start that no one went to jail and the case involved determining whether the blogger had used their post as a threat with respect to a personal dispute? For some reason I can’t copy the post from My Kafkesque Life that deals with this, but it points out the way in which the Taipei Times article has completely warped the discussion, mykafkaesquelife.blogspot.com/20 … urant.html
[quote]-no noodles were mentioned in the original blog post
-she did not write a restaurant review, she was angry and wanted to fight back
-colleague’s testimony in court exposed her as a liar, but the most important thing, that lead to her conviction was the unsubstantiated claims about the sanitary condition
…the judge found that she wrote the post only to harm the restaurant’s reputation and insult the owner with unsupported claims
[/quote]
The case was never about “a review” because there never was a review. No one went to jail. Everyone here is aware of this now, but the entire discussion has been shaped by having to find this out one bit at a time, starting from assumptions about the event that now appear to be wrong or misleading. You still might have issues with the idea of libel as a criminal offense; I do. But that’s not what this thread was originally about and that’s not what thousands of people around the world think is the issue with this case.
[quote=“ScottSommers”]My problem with all this is that much of the debate was started by the original TT article. If an accurate understanding of the case had been available from the start, I doubt much of what was said in all this would have been said. In the course of this thread, it’s been pointed out that the original TT article contains errors in translation from the Libetry Times article, as well as factually irregularities about the event. But by then, everyone’s on record about where they stand on all this. What would have been said if you knew from the start that no one went to jail and the case involved determining whether the blogger had used their post as a threat with respect to a personal dispute?
For some reason I can’t copy the post from My Kafkesque Life that deals with this, but it points out the way in which the Taipei Times article has completely warped the discussion, mykafkaesquelife.blogspot.com/20 … urant.html
Yes, the “My Kafkaesque Life” blog post says:
This is from a copy of the defendant’s blog post, taken from Taiwan Echo’s blog, which is linked to below:
I don’t really know Chinese, but the above says something like, “I used to go [or I have been?] to that bully’s snack shop and eat Sichuan beef noodles [meaning beef noodle soup]. . . . [They/it] tasted bad.” Noodles is colored blue above.
We appear to have duelling bloggers here, because on that very same blog (i. e., “My Kafkaesque Life”), Taiwan Echo, apparently a Taiwanese blogger, commented as follows:
I can’t fully confirm what Taiwan Echo says above, and I can’t even figure out how many witnesses there were, but between the two judgments (the first one for the original trial and the second one for the appeal) there appear to be at least one or two witnesses whose testimony supports what Taiwan Echo says in his/her above-quoted comment from “My Kafkaesque Life.”
This is from a copy of the first judgment, found on Taiwan Echo’s blog; the court (in blue) appears to be asking a question to a witness (in green):
In the quote above, the witness appears to be saying that some things were a bit dirty.
This is from a copy of the second judgment, from the same blog; the court (in blue) appears to be asking the question to a witness (in green):
In the quote above, the court appears to ask the witness whether any of his or her colleagues have said that the food was bad-tasting, or that it was unhealthy, or that there were cockroaches. The witness appears to answer that he or she hasn’t heard anything about cockroaches or bad taste, but that in addition to the defendant, three colleagues said that the environment was dirty.
And there is other testimony, some of which doesn’t seem favorable to the defendant.
Because I don’t know Chinese, I’ll gladly accept any reasonable corrections to any of my interpretations of any of the Chinese text above.
Yes, no one went to jail, yet, but what I have read in the Chinese papers, and according to the verdict on your blog, the blogger was indeed given a jail sentence (well, the word used is detention rather than jail) of 30 days, only it was deferred for two years. In other words, while she didn’t go to jail yet, she has indeed been given a jail sentence and could still go to jail for this offense, no? Isn’t that what a deferred sentence means, that you will go to jail if you don’t behave for the duration of the deferred sentence? Since she really was given a jail sentence and since she might still go to jail, I don’t think the assumptions made are that far wide of the mark.
I highlighted the word noodle in blue, lest anyone miss it.
I think that the above establishes that noodles were, in fact, mentioned in the defendant’s blog post, the assertion contained in the blog “My Kafkaesque Life” notwithstanding.
As to the language you mentioned in the post above this one, I don’t have any particular opinion, so I don’t have anything to say about it.
There appear to have been two posts on part of the blogger who was sentenced, and perhaps this discrepancy may have to do with a confusion over which post is being discussed. Be that as it may, possible errors on part of those who point out that what the TT reported does not match the evidence do not prove that the TT’s report is correct. The more you pay attention to the timeline of events and the details of the evidence (in Chinese), the more i supect that Poagao and MuchaMan, were they to put themselves into the shoes of a restaurant owner, would modify their suggestion that this lawsuit was ONLY about a restaurant review. In this context:
Surely “supposed” is meant to be “expected”.
Welll, this looks like an assertion for which it will be extremely difficult to find any support anywhere in the world.
It shouldn’t? On what grounds should a public blog be considered as private as a conversation among friends in a bar, that is, less public than a public website? Methinks this “it shouldn’t” is quite possibly completely unrelated to the reality most of us live in.
But i am not the only one who sees this matter differently:
[quote=“acid1394”]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 […], then i ought to have legal recourse against her (or possibly him).[/quote]
Well… even if such a review had a basis in fact, in most countries people still have legal recourse if such a review contains statements that go beyond what is based on the stated facts. For example (colour highlight and other editing by myself):
[quote=“mike029”][quote]還有…我以前有去那家[color=#009999]惡霸[/color]店家…味到小吃川味牛肉麵…吃過東西
真的…很難吃…[/quote]
[…] 惡霸 […] means ‘evil tyrant’. She said she visited that “evil tyrant’s restaurant”.[/quote]
In any case, it would seem pretty clear that some commentators in THIS thread didn’t/don’t even have a very basic understanding of the alleged facts and the statements that have been made in the blog under discussion, and in my today very humble opinion they are not exactly in the best position to pronounce judgement on the case the TT reported here or the relevant law(s) in Taiwan.
[quote=“Mawvellous”]The Taipei Times story was simply lifted from the its sister paper the Liberty Times, which is full of inaccuracies at the best of times.
It was then mistranslated by the Taipei Times. Taiwan-based bloggers and the foreign media quickly picked up the story without doing any fact-checking, and within hours the inaccurate headline “Taiwanese blogger jailed for saying beef noodles too salty” was all over the web.[/quote]
Yes, and (including yoourself) you will find about a handful of people among the posters in THIS thread who have tried to document the nature of this inaccuracy.
[quote=“Mawvellous”]I think the headline “blogger jailed for saying beef noodles were too salty” was too good for the various tweeteres, bloggers, and internet news organs to resist.
Aside from poor standard of reporting and editing in the Taipei Times. I think it highlights a number of broader issues in a media world driven by blogs, tweets, and instant news - no one bothered to check the actual facts of the case. The only thing that mattered was the twitter "blogger jailed for saying restaurants beef noodles are too salty " tagline.[/quote]
That’s what it looks like, doesn’t it?
Couldn’t agree more. On the other hand, where would be the entertainment value of that?
I dont think the two are different, except in the case of emails and blogs its easier to prove what was said and easier to show that by numbers reading the blog that it would do more harm. If people were willing to testify what was said at a bar, or anywhere where you say something libelous you can be convicted of libel.
The thing that got this blogger in trouble was a co-worker testified against her and said the blogger had previously told her the food was alright. Without that testimony, I doubt the courts would have grounds to find her guilty.
[/quote] 