LEGAL UPDATE
 Reclusive owner of Radio 2SM, Bill Caralis recently summoned documentary producer and publicist Derek Taylor to the Supreme Court of NSW, attempting to have this website removed from the internet.On November 5, Caralis’s legal representatives alleged that our satirical video clip, The Baby Elephant Walk, featuring Mr Caralis walking through Sydney Airport, was defamatory and that in filming him Taylor’s team were harassing and stalking him and his staff. Caralis’s team alleged that Taylor’s action was “deeply offensive, illegal and damaging” and constituted predatory, threatening behaviour and invasion of privacy. In support of this, solicitor for Caralis, Ms. Venus Aphrodite Cassimaty from Diamond Conway Lawyers,  attempted to argue, quixotically, that filming an ordinary man doing something very ordinary (walking) in a public place amounted to stalking. And worse, that broadcasting of the resulting, somewhat boring images defamed her client. (Perhaps Taylor’s counsel should have counter-claimed with Oscar Wilde’s quip, “Boredom is the only crime.”) Stuart Wells, counsel for Taylor, asserted that in fact it was entirely legal to utilise a video filmed in a public place and to promote his 2SM video documentary via YouTube.Recognising that their claim was unsustainable, not to mention grossly unprepared, Caralis’s representatives agreed to negotiate, settling ultimately for the removal of the “grunts and groans” on the video clip’s audio track. The parties reached a détente with Taylor agreeing to remove the “ Caralis grunts and groans” from future productions and to consider changing the name of the documentary since Mr Caralis felt, paradoxically, that it appeared to be “endorsed” by him — despite his assertion that it also humiliated him. The “Law 101” farce of Caralis’s team not understanding the nature of the internet and new media was underlined in their insistence on the removal of the YouTube video clip. However, the video had already been on the internet for 10 days and received 25,000 hits by the time the claim reached court. The baby elephant had well and truly walked.
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