As a rule, newspaper readers don’t pay a lot of attention to bylines. So a ‘byline strike,’ when it occurs, is the sort of semi-private protest which doesn’t raise many eyebrows, except within the industry. Still, when journalists at the Montreal Gazette withheld their bylines two years ago, they were ordered to reinstate them by the paper’s corporate owner, CanWest Global, and forbidden from talking to other journalists about the issue. Yesterday, a Quebec tribunal ruled that journalists have an absolute legal right to withhold their bylines, and though the ruling may go unnoticed by most Canadians, Antonio Zerbisias says that everyone who prizes independent thought should be celebrating.