The Web provides a voice for the little guy
The Web provides a voice for the little guy.
Thanks to Dan Gillmor for pointing to a pending (and fascinating) Supreme Court case.
The Fourth Amendment (What’s Left of It) on Trial
PapersPlease.org: Meet Dudley Hiibel. He’s a 59 year old cowboy who owns a small ranch outside of Winnemucca, Nevada. He lives a simple life, but he’s his own man. You probably never would have heard of Dudley Hiibel if it weren’t for his belief in the U.S. Constitution.
Do yourself a favor and go view the videotape of the incident and read the facts of the case as presented by PapersPlease.org.
What’s remarkable here to me is that the video is available for anybody to view. We’re able to make up our own minds about what happened, to get it straight from the source. Unfiltered news is a new paradigm made possible by the Internet. If you don’t think that’s true, consider the record-setting downloads of the Janet Jackson Super Bowl incident. News outlets recognize that people want to see such things, but they get in trouble when applying that logic in a mass marketing environment. Such video becomes irritating after awhile, because it’s played over and over and over.
