Slashdot Mirror
Cyberlibel Damages Awarded In Canada
mszeto writes "The Globe And Mail is
reporting that an Ontario judge has awarded an archaeologist 125k$ in damages after someone smeared her using email. According to the lawyer: 'People seem to think there is a level of anonymity to e-mail and the Internet. And that it's a lawless area. And clearly it is not, nor should it be.'"
The burden of proof is on the defendant to prove what they wrote was true, but obviously this only happens after the plaintiff has proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant did indeed write what they are accused of writing.
This is obvious. If someone libels me by writing that I committed a crime, then I don't have to prove that I didn't commit that crime in order to sue them - before they throw around accusations like that they have to be able to prove what they said (or I'd be considered guilty until proven innocent.)
-- Sorry, I can't think of anything funny to say here.
Beyond a reasonable doubt, in a civil trial? What are they smoking up there in Canada?
Usually the standard of proof in civil cases is "a preponderance of the evidence" or "more likely than not."
What?
Correct, you can claim that CmdrTaco is an asshole without any legal worries. However, if - for example - you claimed that he was an asshole because he was using the Slashdot subscription money to fund his drug habit, then you would open yourself up to a libel lawsuit.
Or what about simply SPF.
Seriously, there has been enough noise made about it lately. I jumped on to set up SPF in all of about 10 minutes, it really was that simple.
Since then I have been using the Thunderbird Extension for Sender Policy Framework as a quick and easy way to see which and how many domains publishing SPF records and have noted a few interesting things.
Namely, depsite the fact that MS wants their own standard to be thrown out into the marketplace (namely Sender ID), they are publishing SPF records on both Microsoft.com and on Hotmail.com. If I was the kind of guy who used the word "kudos" I would say "Kudos to them". I am no more of a fan of MS than anyone else here, but, those two domains alone represent a not insignificant percentage of spam floating around that can be fairly simply removed with a mail server reconfig. AOL is also publishing, so well done there.
Gmail are as well of course, but would you expect any less?
Yahoo are not, which amazes me - I realize they want to push DomainKeys, but, I see no reason for them not to be publishing SPF records as well.
The one that absolutely staggered me though was Citibank.com. I recall reading somewhere (no link sorry, but a quick google illustrates the point) that something like half all the phishing emails floating about are aimed at Citibank. For the sake of a few minutes, they could at least give people who want to, a surefire way of rejecting all phishing emails at MTA time. They must have among the crappest DNS admins on earth, or some very bad policy makers.
I shall end this spiel with a request. If you administer a DNS, and you relay, or can easily relay through known machines every time (which would be about 99% of us), then please publish SPF records. You don't have to use other people's records yourself to reject mail - just publish your own records so that other can reject mail that is purportedly from you, but isn't.
The nice thing about all this from the running a receiving MTA perspective, is you can phase it in. Pretty soon, I will be rejecting all mail that is fails SPF checks, but still accepting for people that don't yet publish records.
So please, do it now, jump over to the SPF link at the top of this mail - there is a webform there which dumbs down creating your SPF record as much as it can be dumbed down, and actually gives you a line to paste into your zone file.
Spam could be all but gone in a week for those who want to reconfigure their mail servers to reject it if those records are publish. Imagine that - effectively wiping out spam almost instantly!
If you won't do it for me, do it for the children, oh won't somebody please think of the children.....