Somewhere to start.

I am a refugee trapped in cyber space, banished into the wilderness for daring to speak out about cyber hate-sites. Since entering the cyber world a couple of years ago my journey took me into the world of a fellow New Zealander who had languished in prison for 13 years for crime he would eventually be acquitted of by a jury of his peers.

I had joined a internet trading site called Trade Me, mostly to do trades for equipment useful to my work. The site also had a community message board which held a topic heading sports. The mention of sports was a natural attraction to me and eventually I began posting in what was at times an intemperate environment. Later I started looking at the Opinion's site until one day I came across threads in which the man I mentioned above, David Bain was a topic of conversation along with his retrial that had been ordered by our (in New Zealand at the time) highest Court - The Privy Council.

Prior to this I had taken no interest in what is popularly called the Bain case apart from noting that it was one of those cases that didn't go away. I was aware of the old adage that 'everyone in prison is innocent' but I knew there were certainly times when innocent men do go to prison.

I had no inclination to jump to any conclusions about the Bain case, mostly because like anyone else (I assumed) I didn't want to make a decision on the merits of the case without being sure one way or the other - to the best of my ability. What I eventually found out about the case by reading and applying my own life experiences convinced me that David Bain was an innocent man.

But not only that he was an innocent man but that a number (a small number generally) of my fellow nzers seemed to have a vested interest in spreading lies and misinformation about David Bain. One thing that has been with me a long time is that I don't like people being bullied or picked on and the enormity of realising that some people were treating David Bain's life as though it were a sort of game to be analysed and picked over by many with vested interests drew me like a magnet to help in whatever little way I could.

So I had begun to debate with other posters on the boards finally, convinced of David's innocence, in a manner that was, I admit, a little over the top. I was impatient that people could lie about evidence, misunderstand evidence, be more interested in gossip without seemingly realising that the topic of conversation was a real man charged with killing his own family of five.

I quickly realised there were three camps, those that thought David was guilty, those that didn't know and those that thought he was innocent. It became apparent that there was a lot of hostility from those that thought he was guilty towards those that didn't and I soon reacted in kind.

After David was acquitted in 2009 opposition to him flourished, mainly because of a biased article published in a daily newspaper. Two hate-sites were formed to join a third that had begun during the trial. Soon the hate-siters began an invasion of the boards of Trade Me posting lies, misinformation and deliberately harassing David and his long time advocate and supporter Joe Karam. This harassment included cyber-defamation.

At the time because I was relatively new in the cyberworld I mistakenly thought that TM would do something about the defamatory material and eventually wrote to them about it. I was soon banned, for the particular reason of calling an anonymous poster lucky-trader an ar.ewipe for not being willing to make his statements publicly. This conveniently added to a number of other complaints over a 6 month period of posting on the Bain threads by posters who eventually became members or supporters of the hate-sites. Many of the complaints oddly enough were from people who hold the view that an anonymous person can be defamed. I was shut down but my fight wasn't over and isn't over yet. I'll post more about this at a later date but I'll finish today by saying that I am one part of this situation of being marooned in cyberspace, a small part, David is a much larger part but together (that is you and I) are all part of a shift in time into what has generally been a lawless space of our time.