Canada Ping!
Posted on 01/29/2014 7:14:41 AM PST by conniew
By Andrew Duffy, OTTAWA CITIZEN January 28, 2014
OTTAWA — The online political forum, Free Dominion, has shut down after a wholesale defeat in a libel case brought by Ottawa human rights lawyer Richard Warman.
A jury concluded that Warman was maliciously defamed by four commentators on Free Dominion, a website that bills itself as “the voice of principled conservatism.”
Warman has been awarded more than $127,000 in general damages, aggravated damages, punitive damages and court costs because of 41 defamatory statements published on the conservative website in 2007.
Warman rose to prominence during the past decade by using the Canadian Human Rights Act to shut down the websites of people spreading hate speech; it made him the target of free speech advocates in the conservative blogosphere, and on websites such as Free Dominion.
In a recently released decision, Ontario Superior Court Justice Robert Smith granted Warman a permanent injunction that prohibits Free Dominion from ever repeating “in any manner whatsoever” any of the 41 defamations.
The website’s operators, Connie and Mark Fournier, of Kingston, this week shut down freedominion.ca, saying they could not control what comments other people posted.
“By leaving the forum open and allowing people to comment, we’d be opening ourselves to a contempt-of-court charge,” Connie Fournier said Tuesday.
“If someone repeated one of those comments, we would be in trouble — and could even go to jail.”
The Fourniers have operated the website as a “labour of love” for the past 13 years.
“It’s really sad to be at the point where we have to shut down the political forum,” she said. “But we’ve come to the point where it would be crazy for us to keep it open: it would be too much of a risk.”
They have vowed to appeal the defamation case and have launched a campaign on Indiegogo.com to raise money for their legal costs. The campaign has so far raised $2,800 of its $25,000 goal.
The Warman case is among the first to address at trial what constitutes defamation in the caustic political blogosphere. It adds to case law that suggests the Internet does not shield anonymous posters from legal action if they wrongfully attack someone’s reputation.
On his website, Warman said the case offers lessons for anyone involved in an Internet blog or forum. Chief among them, he said, is the idea that “If you make a mistake, admit it, repair the harm, and move on.”
Connie Fournier, however, said that if the case stands on appeal it will impair the once vibrant Canadian blogosphere.
“I think this is a terrible thing for free speech on the Internet,” she said. “When people who are allowing comments on their blogs and forums look at humongous costs and damage rulings like this, at injunctions that could put them in jail, they’re not going to want to take the risk of opening their site.”
The jury found that the four defendants — Roger Smith, Jason Bertucci, Connie and Mark Fournier — had been “malicious, high-handed and oppressive” in their conduct. Justice Smith also found the defendants had acted unreasonably by refusing to accept Warman’s offer to settle the case for $5,000 each.
Warman had to fight in court to obtain the identifies of those anonymous posters who had left defamatory comments on Free Dominion. The case dragged on for six years, culminating in a three-week trial before a six-person jury.
The Fourniers have never apologized or issued a retraction about the statements found to be defamatory.
© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen
You would think all major websites that allow commentary by posters could be shut down this way.
Are any websites in Canada allowing these type of posts?
Think Progress.
Daily Kos.
Talking Points Memo.
Media Matters for America
Center for American Progress.
etc. etc.
This is awesome:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yT946TGtvjo
He is an “Entrapment Pimp”
A complete slimebucket who is on par with ambulance chasers.
Are any websites in Canada allowing these type of posts?
Every political website, blog and forum in Canada contains comments like the ones from our case. They are all vulnerable and I think most of them know it.
There are some leftists that are crowing about this, of course, but they are the ones who should be the most worried because, by this court's standards, they defame people every single day.
I read that “W” sued Ezra Levant and it looks like Ezra won?
(Ezra Levant, Canadian Conservative Writer)
http://ezralevant.com/2010/08/superior-court-of-justice-rich.html
something really wrong that someone has to lose their right to free speech because they can’t afford to “fight” for their right in Court.
I went there just the other day. Saw the main message page and actually logged in - thinking I ‘might’ see more. I’m very sorry this happened to youall, it’s a big loss of a good site! I did a lot of reading there.
Dem Underground is a cesspool of Hate rhetoric.
Ironically one of the writers for the Vancouver Sun was a poster on either Daily Kossacks or DU, and he was posting that he wished he could bash Laura Bush’s head in. Something to that effect. He was outed her on FR after he attacked FR on posts that were deleted involving the President’s daughters. The comments were, IMHO, rightly deleted as the girls aren’t public figures like their parents. (although that didn’t stop the libs at any of those sites from libeling and hate talking the Palin’s children)
Canada. Figures.
Apparently it’s how he makes himself “special” and “important”.
Wonder if “W” sued the Vancouver Sun reporter for wanting to bash Mrs. Bush’s head? I’ll bet not.
I’ll bet this ticks off Mr. W lawyer. Good watch.
I agree with you that the action taken against Mark and Connie Fournier and, inter alia, Free Dominion, is outrageous.
However, I don't believe it outrageous that anonymous posters were outed. Just because we have a technology that allows world-wide anonymous publication of speech doesn't mean that the speaker should be exempt from libel laws.
We already beat that issue to death on FR during the Terri Schiavo ordeal.
Note I'm not suggesting in any form that posters at Free Dominion libeled anyone.
Canada Ping!
What about major non-political websites? Similar posts can be made on them as well. Start targeting them and suing them and you will see the laws change...
Maybe dominian is part of the problem (re. UK). My suggestion: tactfully and tactically disseminate more Americanization. Do so, until accusations against polticians of being too American are ridiculed by most.
As a free American citizen, I will here express what others cannot, owing to the utterly damnable state of access to elemental human rights in their purportedly-free country.
Ottawa human rights lawyer Richard Warman is a douche bag. Stupid on steroids, he is an unmitigated idiot of the lowest order. Various species of pond scum exhibit impulsive paroxysms of revulsion when exposed to his stunted developmental condition. Warman’s opinions are inherently defective, clinging as they do to the diseased surface of a hopelessly deformed and intellectually impoverished Weltanschauung, which term Warman probably will fail to understand. Richard Warman has managed, by his existence (the virtue of which is nonexistent) to drag the collective morality of the entire nation of Canada down to the level of raw sewage. His greatest accomplishment has been to immeasurably elevate the intellectual level of every occupied room from which he has departed; his exit being simultaneous with, as it were, a collective breath of fresh air among all who remain behind. Human beings subjected to the presence of Richard Warman exhibit, without exception, elevated moral turpitude, increased incidence of personal mendacity, and acute depression of psyche as well as intellect. The passage of Richard Warman along public thoroughfares has been observed to induce spontaneous defecation among avian species perched nearby, and the oppressive nature of his aura spurs fits of inconsolable wailing in small children. Mr. Richard Warman is to the concept of human rights, everything that death is to life itself, and his putrid stint among humanity serves only as an irremovable stain upon the entire race of mankind, past, present, and future. He is, in short, so despicable a being that to attempt what might otherwise be regarded as libel or slander against his person is, instead, a glorious act of truth-telling; a singularly laudable and righteous instance of expressing contempt for that which is utterly contemptible.
Mr. Richard Warman, I here roast you virtually in preparation for your eternal roasting in infernal actuality.
Enjoy it while you may. Hell awaits.
In their defense, that head does look a bit like a butt.
indeed it does
I frankly have no idea what they called the po widdo boy. I just made up my own grievous insult...
Who needs a Bill of Rights?
Also, we need to end these Human Rights Campaigns because they’re simply a front for mind control.
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