My personal feeling about this case is that is it is a pretty good case of entrapment. Trimet set up the trap and Lane walked right into it. They use his own material to make the case however if the context of that material comes out in open court it should be pretty easy to show that the whole case is based on fantasy.
Those of us involved are looking forward to getting Neil Mcfarlane and Bruce Warner up on the witness stand to answer some questions about Trimet policy about bloggers. Mcfarlane makes it his practice to ignore questions from both Lane and I but in open court he will no longer be able to get away with that.
For example in THIS article by the Portland Mercury it becomes very clear just how hostile Trimet public officials are to the local transit bloggers:
But now let's look at whom it doesn't include: members of the public or any of the voracious, vociferous, and occasionally venomous amateur bloggers who make sport (and sometimes break news) out of charting the transit agency's every snort and sniffle. That includes Al Margulies, who runs Rantings of a Former TriMet Bus Driver. And also Lane Jensen, who runs PDX Transit Lane.
That was deliberate, at least on TriMet's part. Its officials have held fast to words like "mainstream" and "unaffiliated" when discussing this issue, and it's clear the bloggers get under their skin with personal comments aimed at its top executives.
What has become clear in the case of Lane Jensen vs Trimet is that while pretending its a case of telphonic harassment it has been used to effectively shut down Lane's first amendment rights to blog about Trimet and has even prohibited him from attending public meetings.
Trimet spin masters will not be able to control the flow of information in open court this will be the most interesting trial in Trimet history for sure
2 comments:
What time and where?
9:00 am room 106 Friday
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