To Miss Christine at CVS? She lit up like a child with a new toy.
Got two hugs for it.
Lordy, I had almost forgotten how good you women feel. The "otherness" is quite charming....
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
Mr. War Man listed a number of them in his complaint.
Kindest regards to you, my lady....
To Miss Christine at CVS? She lit up like a child with a new toy.
Got two hugs for it.
Lordy, I had almost forgotten how good you women feel. The "otherness" is quite charming....
Obama and his minions and masters are probably drooling over the possibility of doing that here.
Does Canada block content from the USA, yet?
Chase the link to the original story and look at his photo. He's Dr. Zhivago's Comrade Strelnikov, without the cool black-leather coat and the armored train.
Who marked up the doc? A juror? War Man?
FR should set up a Canadian page like the other special groups, and some of FD’s American friends should set up a Facebook page for it. Get around the ruling.
And you could shut down FD altogether, then let someone on this side of the border pick it up. If it’s run from the USA, I don’t think the Canadian government can do much to it.
Not yet. But Richard Warman tried to get that, too. It was a site run by some nutbar named Bill White.
He lost that battle, fortunately. Not because Canada would have been any poorer without White's content, but because the precedent would have been devastating!
Notice I default to explaining WHY we stand up for free speech because that's what we have to do in Canada. I forget that, to most Americans, it is self-evident.
Oh, I didn’t realize there were still copies of that verdict floating around! That’s the copy that used to be on Free Dominion and we took it down after the injunction came down.
Those are my backward, left-handed check-marks. :-)
The reason I came back here right now is because I got the nicest note in the mail today from a FReeper who read about our case here.
He sent us an encouraging note and some Canadian bills. Since he (wisely) didn’t include his full name or return address, I just wanted to say thank you here and hope he sees it.
It made our day! :-)
Thanks for the back story.
In hindsight, would you do anything different? Hire more lawyers? Bring on more moderators?
Our server is offshore, but WE would have to move out of the country to protect ourselves. Unless we stepped away and someone in another country took over the site.
***Perhaps you should consider selling/handing over the keys to JimRob and FR, basically a merger. Especially since you posted upthread that this was an experiment to see if something like FR could operate in Canada.
I believe it runs deeper than the politics.
Free Dominion sponsored a full page ad in the National Post, a party with Warman in the court case to be heard on Feb. 19th. They organized a protest on Parliament Hill protesting gay marriage and the another protest over gays being lumped in with minorities etc when it comes to discrimination.
I think that is correct on the second protest. Maybe FD will correct this post if I am wrong.
Family values and their very very public display of these values put them in the cross hairs of the left wing radicals.Shortly after the full page ad their troubles began- Warman’s doctrine of “Maximum Disruption” was launched against them.
Every person that opposes the homo in-your-face agenda and gay marriage should be supporting Free Dominion in their many many court cases.
My hat is off to anybody that would place a full page ad opposing these godless ventures and include their names.
I hate to admit it but it is far more than I would be willing to do.
Wayne.
This is a real scream for anybody that loves South Park.
Now remember that there were about 40 posts that were found to be defamatory. The Fournier ended up owing $127,000.00 for these posts that people made.
That works out to a little better than $3000.00 for each comment. (Not counting their own legal fees.
Here is what cost you $3000.00
Posting #8
“The poster is of the opinion that Richard Warman is a felching fecalphiliac”
South Park could do a show on the stupidity of the Canadian justice system.
A made up word for an imaginary condition from a TV cartoon. It is unbelievable.
The link to the comments are posted. Go have a look and pick out your favorite.
Even with the advantage of hindsight there really wasn't anything different we could have done. The influx of federal government agents that hit us in 2007, when this all began, shows pretty clearly that this was a government operation. Government fears and loathes what it can't control. Canadians are being attacked on two major fronts by our federal government, we are being spied on by our government and they have operatives using the courts to shutdown websites. They can't outlaw the internet but they can make people too afraid to speak their opinions online.
And it's working. When we first opened Free Dominion we had competitors who really wanted to take our place as the leading conservative forum in Canada. We fought long and hard to maintain our leadership but there were always people waiting in the wings to dethrone us. Now Free Dominion has been censored but nobody is stepping up to fill the void, Canadians are too afraid of their government to take the chance that they will be put through what we are enduring.
I once saw some old black and white footage of a battlefield that appeared to be in Africa. I have no idea who the combatants were or if there were good guys and bad guys. At the edge of the battle there were about 50 prisoners surrounded by their captors. The prisoners were sitting on the ground and if one of them spoke a word or even raised his eyes he was instantly and savagely beaten with rifle butts. It didn't take long before all the captives knew what not to do and soon the beating became unnecessary.
This is what our government is trying to do to Canadians, make us so afraid that we will not speak out. Like the captives in the footage, most of us are learning pretty quickly to stay silent.
I guess Connie and I are just slow learners.
I guess Connie and I are just slow learners.
***I would say vehemently that such is not the case. You and Connie have demonstrated tremendous courage in defending True Liberty, Free Speech, and the Right Vision that Canadians have of themselves. Let alone your defense of conservatism.
What you and your country need now, desperately, is prayer. I will be praying for you.
The influx of federal government agents that hit us in 2007, when this all began, shows pretty clearly that this was a government operation.
***Free Republic has probably had similar influxes. First in 2000, from republicans who were simply not conservative (CINOs). Then in 2007-2009 from Democrat/Obama operatives. We are next.
Please consider one of my longstanding proposals, the FR VOLUNTARY ideology matrix. Would such a thing have saved FD?
From my home page...
___________________________________________________________________
I would like to see a VOLUNTARY idealogy litmus matrix here on Free Republic, but when I proposed it to Jimrob, he called me a newbie.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2395256/replies?c=6
To: babygene I don’t think he’s all that interested.
To: MHGinTN It doesn’t matter what a FReeper thinks. It’s just a list that they tell us what they think. That way we can tell who we’re dealing with.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2145065/posts?page=130#130
To: Jim Robinson Hah hah, that’s great. I signed up 2 months after you and I’m a newbie. Back then no one even said, “Welcome to FR”. But yeah, I do think that there are tons of RINOs. To be more accurate, the term would be CINOs.
I’ve been pushing for an idealogical litmus matrix here on FR, not to get rid of RINOs but to expose them.
THE GOP DOESN’T WANT US- SO WHAT’S NEXT?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1965735/posts?page=762#762
***It simply takes too long. Look at this thread alone. I see evidence of RINOism in some of the FReepers on this thread. It takes 700 posts to drill down. We need the matrix posted and available so that we don’t have to drill down on every FReeping thread. They’re wasting our time. Deliberately.
Agreed to a large degree. Perhaps a way to rate members by other members???
762 posted on Thursday, February 07, 2008 8:43:23 PM by roamer_1
130 posted on Monday, December 08, 2008 2:39:20 PM by Kevmo (Palin/Hunter 2012)
49 posted on Monday, December 22, 2008 7:29:27 PM by Kevmo ( It’s all over for this Country as a Constitutional Republic. ~Leo Donofrio, 12/14/08)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 46 | View Replies] 48 posted on Thursday, November 26, 2009 10:25:08 PM by Kevmo (So America gets what America deserves - the destruction of its Constitution. ~Leo Donofrio, 6/1/09)
___________________________________________________________________
That is the phrase that Warman coined when he was speaking to a group of Anti-Racist Action...er...people.
He outlines his strategy for fighting "Nazis" (a term he seems to apply to people somewhat indiscriminately).
Here is a link to a copy of that speech for your reading enjoyment. It is probably the only copy left on the internet as he has made copyright claims against everyone who has posted it so they take it down. (You'll see why).
That speech is one of the things he sued us for copyright over in the case he lost and appealed. That is going back to court next week.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.