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Domain: canlii.org
Stories and comments across the archive that link to canlii.org.
Stories · 5
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Man Caught Wearing Earbuds With a Dead Phone Found Guilty of Distracted Driving (www.cbc.ca)
Freshly Exhumed writes: RCMP officers spotted a man driving with earbuds plugged into his iPhone. The phone was not in his hands nor on his lap, was not playing music or video, and the driver was not using it to talk to someone or navigate. The battery was, in fact, completely dead. Nonetheless, a judge has ruled that "by plugging the earbud wire into the iPhone, the defendant had enlarged the device, such that it included not only the iPhone (proper) but also attached speaker or earbuds," he wrote. "Since the earbuds were part of the electronic device and since the earbuds were in the defendant's ears, it necessarily follows that the defendant was holding the device (or part of the device) in a position in which it could be used, i.e. his ears." On the question of the battery, the judge said he relied on a 2015 precedent set in a Canadian provincial court, which says that holding an electronic device in a position where it could be used constitutes an offense, even if it is temporarily not working. -
Canadian Court Finds Website Scraping Infringes Copyright
First time accepted submitter wrecked writes "A trial judgment from British Columbia, Canada, found that Zoocasa, a real estate search site operated by Rogers Communications, breached copyright by scraping real estate listings and photos from Century 21 Canada. The decision thoroughly reviews the issues of website scraping, Terms of Use, 'Shrink Wrap' and 'Click Wrap' Agreements, robots.txt files, and copyright implications of hyperlinking. For American readers used to multi-million dollar damages, the court here awarded $1,000 (one thousand dollars) for breach of the Century 21 website's Terms of Use, and statutory copyright damages totalling $32,000 ($250 per infringing real estate photo). More analysis at Michael Geist's blog, and the Globe & Mail." -
Canadian Court Sides With Online Anonymity
bs0d3 writes "Michael Geist said of a recent Canadian court ruling, 'Anonymous speech can be empowering — whistleblowers depend upon it to safeguard their identity and political participants in some countries face severe repercussions if they speak out publicly — but it also carries the danger of posts that cross the line into defamation without appropriate accountability.' Although I disagree that defamation is an acceptable reason for a court to find someone's identity, the outcome of this trial seems favorable. The court was not asked to determine whether the posts at issue were in fact defamatory. Rather, it simply faced the question of whether it should order the disclosure of personal information about the posters themselves so that someone could proceed with a defamation lawsuit. The court relied on 'Warman v. Fournier,' a previous Canadian defamation case and asked, '(1) Whether there was a reasonable expectation of anonymity; (2) Whether the plaintiff established a prima facie case of wrongdoing by the poster; (3) Whether the plaintiff tried to identify the poster and was unable to do so; and (4) Whether the public interest favoring disclosure outweigh the legitimate interests of freedom of expression and right to privacy of the persons sought to be identified if the disclosure is ordered." In this case the order to identify the poster was denied. Since the plaintiff did not identify the specific defamatory words, she failed to establish a prima facie case of defamation. Moreover, the court also ruled that the posters had a reasonable expectation of anonymity and that there were insufficient efforts to try to identify them." -
Media Organizations Join Forces to Fight Canadian Ruling
csaila writes "Some of the world's big media outlets (including CBC, CNN, Guardian, The Globe and Mail, The New York Times, Reuters, and -- as well as Amazon, AOL, Google and Yahoo) are appealing a Canadian court ruling threatening both free speech and the Net. The ruling stems from a former UN employee who successfully sued the Washington Post in Ontario for libel, arguing that because the Post's Web site carried the story. his reputation had been "damaged" in that province." -
Media Organizations Join Forces to Fight Canadian Ruling
csaila writes "Some of the world's big media outlets (including CBC, CNN, Guardian, The Globe and Mail, The New York Times, Reuters, and -- as well as Amazon, AOL, Google and Yahoo) are appealing a Canadian court ruling threatening both free speech and the Net. The ruling stems from a former UN employee who successfully sued the Washington Post in Ontario for libel, arguing that because the Post's Web site carried the story. his reputation had been "damaged" in that province."