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Mugabe Versus the Internet-reporter's trial could undermine Zimbabwe's view of national sovereignty*** Courts throughout the world are grappling with the legal consequences of publication on the ubiquitous and directionless web. For example, Australia's high court is deciding whether it has jurisdiction in civil defamation over a Wall Street Journal website in New Jersey. But the Meldrum case is the first to assert local criminal jurisdiction over foreign web postings. Countries with more barbaric laws against seditious writing (Iran and Libya, for example) would doubtless welcome a precedent.

This prosecution may prove an "own goal" for Robert Mugabe. He claims that his laws, however repugnant to other countries, are of concern only to Zimbabwe: they provide no warrant for the international community to interfere in his internal affairs. But by giving these laws extraterritorial effect, asserting jurisdiction over web publishers wherever they may be located, his laws are attacking freedom of speech abroad as well as at home. Even on his own outdated theory of national sovereignty, this would entitle other countries to take action against Zimbabwe to protect the freedom of speech of their own citizens.

These new media laws are blatant infringements of the country's constitutional guarantee of freedom of expression: the acid test of the country's judiciary will be whether, in subsequent proceedings, it has the independence to say so.***