Nicholas sez, “The TL:DR is essentially that the Ontario Superior Court has issued guidelines that by default make it against courtroom rules for anyone who is not a journalist or a lawyer to use tech in a courtroom. Even to take notes. Even if it is in the public interest.
When I took part in the Byron Sonne trial note-taking (which many members and friends of Hacklab.to did), most of us used netbooks and laptops to transcribe court proceedings. Few of us would have qualified even as ‘citizen’ journalists, but our work was important because it gave public exposure to a very important case. If this policy is enforced, we won’t be able to do that any more.
Background: I am a member of Toronto Hacklab, I took a (marginal) part in taking notes for some of the later proceedings, and I used a laptop. If this policy had been in place back then, I would have not been able to transcribe court proceedings.”
Ontario Superior Court OKs tweeting, but only by journalists and lawyers