TORONTO - Crown lawyers who are not opposed to televising segments of a recorded jailhouse interview with Paul Bernardo are in need of a reality check if they think an Ontario judge's order would keep the video off the Internet, experts say.
Lawyers for several media outlets are asking the court to make the video available for use on television and online, but the Crown wants to prevent the entire 31-minute video from being posted on the Internet for fear it would be misused by the public.
The Crown is not opposed to allowing media outlets to post those segments of the video that are used in news reports.
Superior Court Justice David McCombs told lawyers last week that he intends to grant media outlets some form of access to the video, but reserved until Tuesday his decision on whether there would be any limitations placed on its use.
However, experts say it would be futile to try and ban from the Internet a video that's broadcast on television.
"It will be online within seconds (of being broadcast),'' said Internet and technology expert Rick Broadhead. "Trust me -- it will be everywhere.''
The technology to record from TV to computer is simple, cheap and easy to find, Broadhead said. All it takes is a cable connection and a TV tuner card, which allows a computer to function as a television. From there, recording, saving and posting to a video-sharing site like YouTube is simply a matter of a few clicks of the mouse, Broadhead said.
An even simpler method, although of a lower quality, would be to use a digital camera or cellphone to record the broadcast off the television screen, he added.
The reality is that once a video is available in one format, it can quickly be converted into almost any other format, Broadhead said.
"As soon as you make it available in any form, it will be all over the place,'' he said. "(The judge) can do what he can in the confines of his chambers, but the technology is going to outpace his ability to control where that video shows up.''
Even if the video didn't make it online through the work of citizens, it's "paternalistic'' to restrict its release to one medium, said Andrea Slane, executive director of the Centre for Innovation Law and Policy at the University of Toronto.
"That means evaluating who counts as a legitimate news purveyor who can therefore be trusted with this type of information, and I think that distinction is getting harder and harder to make given that you have all these online sources,'' Slane said.
If Crown lawyers are concerned the video could influence the outcome of a future trial, they should reconsider allowing its release at all, said Daniel Burnett, a professor of media law at the University of British Columbia.
"Generally speaking, the courts are far too quick to jump to the conclusion that jurors will be influenced on things,'' Burnett said.
"I think jurors are far smarter than they are often given credit for in terms of judging things on the evidence before them.''
The June 7, 2007, video interview shows police questioning Bernardo about the unsolved killing of student Elizabeth Bain, who vanished in 1990.
It was an exhibit at the trial of Robert Baltovich, which ended abruptly on April 22 after the prosecution said it had no reasonable prospect of conviction. Minutes later, a jury found Baltovich not guilty in the disappearance and death of Bain, his former girlfriend.
McCombs has described the video as more "boring'' than "chilling.''
Bernardo remains in prison on a life sentence for the murders of teenagers Leslie Mahaffy and Kristen French.
