The testimony - which alleges that senior members of the ruling Liberal Party were involved in money laundering and bribery - has ignited a national scandal that could bring down the entire government.
The Captain's Quarters weblog is run by 42-year-old Minneapolis call centre manager Edward Morrissey, and on 2 April he began posting summaries of the evidence presented to Justice John Gomery's court.
While Canadian journalists were prevented from publishing details of the witnesses' testimony, the hearings remained open to journalists and other interested parties; according to Mr Morrissey, one such party approached him and began supplying key details of the witnesses' statements.
As neither Mr Morrissey nor his site were located in Canada, the Canadian authorities could do nothing but watch as the weblog's traffic soared from 20,000 to 400,000 hits per day. When it became obvious that the secret testimony was no longer secret, Justice Gomery lifted the gagging order.
Speaking to the New York Times, Mr Morrissey described Justice Gomery's decision as a victory for free speech: "These information bans are self-defeating... The politicians know, the media knows, but the Canadian voters are left in the dark and that's a backwards way of doing things."
The case demonstrates the increasing difficulty of enforcing gagging orders in a world where everyone's a potential publisher: by leaking information to bloggers or to gossip message boards, journalists could quickly render any reporting restrictions unenforceable.
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