Free Dominion was sold to Liberty News Service in Panama, and the server resides in Panama. Also, no IP addresses or server logs are kept (and they haven’t been for well over a year).
The problem is that, because we are Canadian citizens, we were required under the law to save the IP addresses and email addresses of the posters in question once we were served with the lawsuit (which was before the sale of the site).
Although that information has been retained, the IP addresses are so old they will not likely produce any useful information, and who uses a real email address in a forum?
But, we are fighting this on principle. Although Liberty News Service is very careful with user information, most Canadian sites are not. And, this ruling means that anyone can find out anything about any forum poster by merely filing a statement of claim against the website owner. This is a very, very dangerous precedent.
I read some lefties opining that we should have lost this motion because people have no right to defame someone anonymously.
I think it is important to clarify our position here.
It has never been our position that people should be able to break the law anonymously (including defamation). Our argument is that "outing" a person online is a drastic thing to do (especially when our opponents like to destroy them after they find out who they are), and it should not be routinely done just because someone files a statement of claim.
We belive that a prima facie case should have to be established before a possibly innocent person's privacy is irrevocably compromised.
We thought this was entirely reasonable. Unfortunately, the judge did not agree.
hello and sorry to read about this ruling, but am not quite up to speed on all the facts
queens bench ruling against you based solely on a statement of claim seems like a reach, of course
but i’d like to know what was so controversial that someone (allegedly posted) on freedominion that someone sued you as sysops/owners ? is there a libel issue ? or is this one of those fasciist tribunal things? clearly coqb found something compelling, yes ? liberal judges suck but its canada, after all. like all bureaucracies everywhere they love to waste our time justifying their existence and protecting their paycheques, right ?
not trying to play devils advocate or anything but not sure what you are fighting for ? you guarantee your site users anonymity on the internet ?
i’d be willing to fight to the death to defend another’s rights to free speech, but thats the price of freedom. and that person would have to be willing to stand up and own their words.
to defend someone’s ‘right’ to anonymous freedom of speech is something else entirely. i’m not really sure how i feel about that...can someone more enlightened than i am explain to me why this is bad ?