Canada's parliamentary election next month will be governed by a 1938 law banning the "premature transmission" of results from one end of the country to the other. Which means a tweet about local election results could land you in jail.

Canadians face up to $25,000 in fines and five years in jail for blog posts, tweets or any other nationally available transmission of early election results, for example from their own regional tallies. And, though designed in the radio era, the law definitely applies to the internet; in 2007, the Canadian Supreme Court upheld a fine of $1,000 against a Vancouver blogger who published results from eastern parts of the country. "We can only hope that this election will finally prove to the courts that such a news blackout is... a condescending relic of the 1930s," writes the Montreal Gazette. Or perhaps just in need of some tweaking: A $25,000 fine against only truly terrible tweets might just do some good.

[via BoingBoing]

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