The entire blogosphere was put on trial during the second day of a B.C. Human Rights Tribunal hearing into an excerpt of a controversial book published in Maclean's.

As bloggers pecked away at their laptops at the back of the Vancouver courtroom, lawyer Faisal Joseph - who called Mark Steyn's 2006 article, "The Future Belongs to Islam," "hateful and irresponsible" journalism against Muslims - used some of their own work to prove the lasting impact of the article.

"They talk about Muslims, they talk about doing terrible things to Muslims," Joseph said, referring to three blogs in particular.

Joseph said one of those was the Western Standard, whose former publisher Ezra Levant - currently facing his own human rights action in Alberta for publishing a comic depicting the Prophet Muhammed - was blogging from the courtroom.

Maclean's lawyer Roger McConchie tried to argue that comments on Steyn's article posted on the Internet in other jurisdictions had no relevance to the hearing, but the tribunal accepted them anyway.

The hearing continues.