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To: Lurking Libertarian
In the United Staes, a website operator cannot be sued for statements made by commenters on the site, under section 302 of the Communications Decency Act.

Well, since here in the good ol' USA you can apparently sue someone in Aargentina for acts committed on Argentinian soil against Argentinian citizens some decades ago, I'd not be surprised at all to see Canada allow suits against operators of American websites for allegedly libeling canadian citizens. It's not near as much of a stretch, since the internet extends to Canada.

204 posted on 01/30/2014 6:20:45 AM PST by zeugma (Is it evil of me to teach my bird to say "here kitty, kitty"?)
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To: zeugma
Well, since here in the good ol' USA you can apparently sue someone in Aargentina for acts committed on Argentinian soil against Argentinian citizens some decades ago, I'd not be surprised at all to see Canada allow suits against operators of American websites for allegedly libeling canadian citizens. It's not near as much of a stretch, since the internet extends to Canada.

There is already a precedent for this. Conrad Black was allowed to sue an American website under Ontario defamation law for words they published in the US.

Because of the internet we, literally, are all in this together.

207 posted on 01/30/2014 6:41:27 AM PST by conniew
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To: zeugma
Well, since here in the good ol' USA you can apparently sue someone in Aargentina for acts committed on Argentinian soil against Argentinian citizens some decades ago,

The U.S. Supreme Court has shut down most of those lawsuits (see, e.g., Daimler v. Bauman decided by SCOTUS this month).

I'd not be surprised at all to see Canada allow suits against operators of American websites for allegedly libeling canadian citizens. It's not near as much of a stretch, since the internet extends to Canada.

No doubt that Canada can do that but, unless the American defendant has assets in Canada, it won't do the plaintiff any good. Under the SPEECH Act (passed unanimously by Congress in 2010 and signed into law by Obama), a foreign-court's libel judgment cannot be enforced in the United States unless the foreign country's libel laws are at least as protective of free speech as U.S. law.

228 posted on 01/30/2014 10:24:00 AM PST by Lurking Libertarian (Non sub homine, sed sub Deo et lege)
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