Forum Moderators: rogerd
A right wing message is the target of a lawsuit. The owners of the board as well as 8 members/posters are the target of a $150 000 lawsuit filed recently.
It is a political website with right wing leanings that has been the target of at least one Human Rights Commision investigation. This site is not a "far right wing" website, but some of the members could be described that way. The site is very large with 100's of thousands of posts. I wont link to it but it is called Free Dominion.
I believe that the site may be hosted on US servers, which adds an interesting twist.
The owners of the site have long felt that they are being targeted for political reasons to be shut down.
LETS AVOID THE POLITICAL ASPECT OF THIS CASE DURING THIS DISCUSSION!
The reason I am even bringing this issue here is that the owners are being held libel for what others posted have on their website. So this could have far reaching implications in Canada concerning free speech and the internet.
If you are a Canadian and own a message board, allow comments on a blog or something along those lines, you may want to keep an eye on this case. Because you might be the next target of a lawsuit because of what is posted on your site.
The issue of "where to host" politically-sensitive sites has come up here periodically.
This case emphasizes that, while hosting in another country may put your material out of reach of censorship, it doesn't put you out of reach of the law. Hosting in another country might protect you to some degree from "nuisance suits" by raising the cost of legal action.
In fact, by hosting in another country, you might *increase* your over-all legal exposure.
Hosting in a second country may also cause to the posters to feel they are safe to post sensitive or illegal things, therefore making the situation worse.
The other issue that this suit brings up, what is the responsibility of the site owner to censor the postings. This would be a huge job to monitor all posts on a site as highly trafficked as this one.
It could put a chill on all message boards in Canada or other western countries.
Sticking to your principles is an admirable trait, but I'd generally advise community operators to remove content with legal ramifications as soon as the problem is called to their attention. Better safe than sorry, and a protracted lawsuit falls into the "sorry" category. Of course, a political community with a definite viewpoint may not be able to make that kind of move as easily as, say, a forum about cats.
I am planning on following this case and will post any developments. I feel this could have a far reaching affect on some of the members of WebmasterWorld. They just don't know it yet.
Posting on a forum feels like conversing, but then a persistent record of that conversation remains. I wonder if features like subscriber only post viewing--which would make the record no longer public--or something like post pruning--to make the conversations ephemeral--would help protect a site from such action.
I guess issues like this ask the question of whether a forum is more like a public conversation or a published document.
Doesn't really make much difference. It's just the difference between libel and slander. While there are some differences between how they are treated, both are defamation. And neither require mass dissemination - you can libel somebody in a letter (to a third party).
Sticking to their guns for a political philosophy is going to cost them dearly.
And not sticking to them could cost them dearly too, the next thing will be is every tom, dick and harry will be suing for anything they disagree with. I don't know the content of the posts in questions but unless their authenticity was questionable or of an illegal nature I'd tell the people bringing the lawsuit to kiss my....
I don't know the content of the posts in questions but unless their authenticity was questionable
There were many, many posts criticising the character of a person who was not even posting on the message board. Using the persons actually name and city where he lived.
Not sure if it will meet the definition of slander but it was definately mean and nasty in nature. They were doing it because they disagreed with this person over political issues. The person is not a politician by profession by the way.
X politician is a bigot. Would get the person a warning and be edited.
X politician is bigot because.... is fine with me.
I'm sure that it appears we are being overly stubborn, but we are doing it for an important reason.
This case could set a dangerous precedent for Canadian forum owners. If he is allowed to win it will no longer be possible to run an internet forum (especially a political one) in Canada because people will be threatening defamation suits against webmasters every time their names are mentioned online.
Webmasters should not have to have a law degree to run a discussion forum. We take down things that we know to be untrue, but much of the stuff he is complaining about can be backed up with evidence such as tribunal transcripts, or it is the opinion of the posters. We can't remove all discussion of this individual (who has made himself a public figure by launching nearly 50% of the complaints against websites to the Canadian Human Rights Commission) simply because he doesn't want his actions discussed.
This issue affects all Canadian webmasters no matter which side of the political spectrum you are on. There are several websites that I could sue for comments that were made about me, but I wouldn't do it because it I care too much about internet free speech.
Anyway, that's my two cents. Hopefully, by fighting this case, we can make Canadian cyberspace safer for all blog and forum owners.
