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Cyberlibel Damages Awarded In Canada

Posted by timothy on from the that-was-very-hurtful dept.

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.'"

6 of 247 comments (clear)

  1. Lies! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    "People seem to think there is a level of anonymity to e-mail and the Internet."

    Ha!

  2. Mental Note: by mekkab · · Score: 5, Funny

    Use anonymous re-mailer before slandering colleagues. Also, remove personal sig with my name, tele number, and address, too.

    Mr. Gates is a big fairy!

    -- /s/

    Robert M. Shankely
    348-8347
    234 Niam St.
    Provo, Utah.

    --
    In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
  3. Re:Except that email can be forged by iii_rjm · · Score: 5, Interesting

    So can papers and signatures. What is your point?

  4. Caveat Lector by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 5, Interesting

    But maybe it should be different. Libel in a signed, reputable publication is much more damaging than in anonymous email, as long as the readers can tell the difference. Which we still can. Email is likely to remain 99% crap, like everything else, so this victory really belongs to the old media, which now are judged according to the lower bar of email.

    --

    --
    make install -not war

  5. Re:A scary prescedent? by LurkerXXX · · Score: 5, Funny

    You better be careful, or he will sue you. Then in a few hours, he will forget he'd done it, and he'll sue you again. Dupe lawsuits!

  6. Re:Uh oh.. this could be a bad precident.. by Thangodin · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The problem with spam is not that people might buy the product. The damage to me has nothing to do with that. It's the time I waste and the bandwidth I pay for that they steal. It's also the fact that spammers are the money behind most of the viruses, spam relays bots, etc, which are jamming the web and costing us billions of dollars. A lot of the large cyber-criminal organizations got their start by working for large spam operations.

    And stuff like the Nigerian scam is a crime. The letter itself is evidence of fraud, if they can catch those that sent it.