However the limited distribution on paper at Wellington Railway Station is so retro as to suggest it is more a gesture, a deliberate provocation of the status quo, rather than any serious attempt to inform the public. Otherwise they would use the Internet.
How long the legal system believes it can sustain its control of distribution of information before it moves to a new model of jurisprudence will be as interesting to watch as the struggles of the recording and distribution industries.
Interdiction of information may have always been futile in one way or another. Constable Abbot was no doubt well known to anyone who intended him harm, the folding of the 4th Estate, with one exception, before another police action, is another example of the "great and good" protecting their own patches at the expense of the public knowlege.
Do we need to know? Good question, but a better one to ask would be, Do you trust them? Given the components of the system and their known behaviour, Politicians, Lawyers and Police, it would seem the more transparency in the law, the better.
Doubt comes in at the window when inquiry is denied at the
door.
-- Benjamin Jowet