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ISP Fined $5000 For Hate Content
eRondeau writes "In a precedent-setting ruling, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal has fined a hosting company for carrying 'objectionable content'. The material in question was White Supremacist postings. From the article: 'The ruling sends a very strong message that Internet servers, if they are aware there is hate content and don't take timely action to remove it, can be held liable,' said the Ottawa lawyer who filed the complaint in February 2002. The individual posters were fined thousands as well."
The only thing that is really censored is hate speech (including Holcaust denial).
Am I open minded towards open source, or closed minded towards closed source?
Is this the so-called "Western freedom" we hear so much about? You're free to say or write whatever you want, as long as it doesn't fall under some completely subjective definition of "hate"? Doesn't sound like freedom to me in any way.
There is a common kindergarten playground saying we should keep in mind: "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me."
Western nations need to remember that free expression does not cause harm. Things may be said that one does not agree with; but that is no reason to punish those who expressed such opinions! Why is no punishment needed? Because nobody was ever harmed or wronged by free expression.
In fact, we have seen time and time again that free expression for all ends up being the best protection a nation can have. It is one of the best weapons against tyranny. It can battle corruption. It's a far more effective protection than any weapon could ever be.
You could say that the ISP got shafted in this one and was fined for things beyond its control, but if you actually RTFA, you will find out that one of the persons charged personally for posting hate messages is also the owner of the ISP.
I don't think this case is a precendent-setting as the original post makes out.
After the incident was publicized, the Ontario Ministry of Education was investigated and two teachers were suspended.
Canadian Islamic groups are now protesting the inequity of the Ministry's actions. They are demanding that the Ministry investigate hate speech at Jewish schools. And as an example of what they are concerned about, the Canadian Islamic Congress issued a press release on Friday calling for the investigation of a Kingston-area Hebrew school. The reason? A nine-year-old student at the school published a letter in the Kingston newspaper, the Whig-Standard, charging that Palestinians wished "to push the Israelis into the sea." According to the Islamic Congress, the views expressed in the child's letter are views "damaging to healthy relationships among many Canadians in our multicultural and pluralist society." Maybe you remember that famous jibe of Anatole France's about the law with majestic impartiality forbidding both the rich and poor to sleep under bridges? In the same way, the Canadian Islamic Congress seems to believe that healthy multiculturalism should treat exactly equally an Islamic school that encourages young Muslims to fantasize about murdering Jews - and a Jewish school that teaches its students to object to being murdered.
Therein lies the danger. As Jefferson so aptly wrote centuries ago, the best cure for such speech is more free speech and the clear light of day. To involve the government in such matters can only result in direct government involvement in private political debate. In Canada, if the government objects to what one says, one is simply declared illegal. One must shut up or face the full sanction of the law. No doubt this would please our liberal friends to no end, having thoroughly lost every public policy debate since around 1979. We understand that freedom of speech is painful to liberals. We know what you're going through, having had to live through the era when you controlled the public debate and no dissenting voices to liberal orthodoxy were allowed into the hallowed halls of CBS News or the New York Times.
linky:
http://newsisyphus.blogspot.com/2005/04/canada-and -hate-speech-codes.html
You can be sure that only white racists will be prosecuted. Islamic hate will be tolerated, and no fines will be assesed on Canadian web sites that advocate the killing of infidels.
As usual, noone reads the original article. The ISP in question was owned by one of the supremacists fined. It changes the whole perspective on things.
Indeed. Shocked and surpised that it's him that ruled it, I ain't. He's been pushing for a 'police state' type legal system as long as I've read the news ... and likely, longer.
~ Wizardry Dragon
Well, maybe this part of the article will help:
From the article:
Kulbashian may be on the hook for the $3,000 fine against Affordable Space.com, because he owned the company.
The link between the web site and the company (ISP) is that the owner of the ISP was also a member of the association with the offending we site. Because of this, the ISP had official knowledge that the hate speech was on its servers. Therefore, the ISP became a willing participant to the hate speech. It doesn't seem like much of a stretch in this case.
I'm deliberately posting as AC for a few reasons, but I know a bit of the background here, items that did not come through in the news article:
/or read the web site in question? I did. Scary stuff, and IMO, an abuse of freedom of speach on a scale much larger than yelling "fire" in a crowded movie theatre.
- the white supremacists in this local area are seen by police and others as being a very real threat to the physical safety of others. Yes, they are capable of real violence. These are not just a group of "good ole boys" funning around, they are quite dangerous, and some of them have criminal records;
- the ISP in question, if memory serves me correctly, was contacted more than once, and warned that the website hosted was adovcating physical violence, and nothing was done by the ISP;
- the ISP could of, IMO, been nailed under the criminal code of Canada for allowing people to voice physical threats against others, but I think the crown used the hate law crimes to really drive the point home;
- although not directly related to this case, the problem with white supremacists in this area goes back over 130 years when the KKK was first formed in this area in the early 1870s. It is possible we have had the Klan here longer in our city than many US cities have. Another example - the last public cross buring by KKK / Neo-Nazies was in the mid 1980s on a private farm just outside city limts, but that gathered so much police attention, they went to ground.
Top sum up, these are very, very scary people. The law who prosecuted the case are NOT, IMO, some socialistic, left wing, do-gooders using hate laws to enfore a social agenda on the country through use of the courts, this is a crackdown on some very disturbed people.
One last thought - how many of you actually saw and
I hate censorship with a passion, but this was something else altogether.
Whoa -- can everyone slow down for a second and take a look at the facts?
From http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pag ename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&call_pageid=971 358637177&c=Article&cid=1142031016503:
In essence, the /. summary is not telling the whole story. This isn't a case of some corporate ISP where some customer happened to be running a hate site getting fined. In this case the ISP owner was providing the content, and not just hosting it.
Additionally, it wasn;t the ISP that was fined -- it was the people who created the illegal content, one of whom happens to own the web service provider in question.
You can't just start an ISP in order to avoid hate speech laws. The /. summary is highly misleading in this case, so please get off your high-horses and take a look at the facts before starting yet another rant, okay?
Yaz.
Look, I understand where your concerns are coming from, but in this case you're going off the deep end, because the fact of the matter is, the /. summary is wrong.
See http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pag ename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&call_pageid=971 358637177&c=Article&cid=1142031016503. In this case, the person who owns the web hosting service was generating the hate content. In addition, it wasn't the web hosting service which was fined -- it was the owner who was generating and posting the hate content onto his own service.
In other words, you're safe to run an online forum in Canada. If some ass-hat posts something in an attempt to incite hatred towards a group, you're not liable. If, however, you post that hate incitement, you are liable, regardless of the fact that you happen to own the web hosting service you're using.
Clearer? Good.
Yaz.
It's also one of the few that guarantees juries for all criminal and all substantial civil court cases.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
"The question im left with i does Canada have any laws protecting free speech explicitly?"
We have very strict rules WRT free speech, it is part of the Constitution. You have every right to say or print whatever you want. The courts have stated: that right ends where it infringes on someone elses Constitutionally protected rights. IE: their right against discrimination, safety, security, free association etc. .
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Mark Twain
This is indeed a different discussion. I was merely objecting to the inflamatory and misleading Slashdot summary. The impression which Slashdot "editors" wanted to create was that it was some "random, innocent bystander ISP" which was being held accountable for something on one of the million of its websites, i.e. "Panic now! Anthing anyone posts on your hosting servers will get you in Jail! Run! Scream!". In fact, it is the people responsible for the site (who happened to be the owners of the ISP) who are being held accountable.
/. hasn't been based in Michigan for like 8 years now
In Canada speaking out what you think [however horrible] to friends is different from publishing your ideas in various forms. [emphasis mine]
But that's the whole point. While I admit ignorance of Canadian law, here in the U.S., the whole point of freedom of speach isn't so you can be a douchebag in public, but to prevent the suppression of alternative or countering political viewpoints, so that the parties in power cannot render illegal any speach which disagrees with the 'official' stance of those in power.
Unfortunately, sometimes people abuse their right of free speach, for ex. when condoning hatred of other groups, but that is by far the lesser evil compared to criminalizing speach against one's government. It's an all-or-nothing situation, folks. You may rejoice the silencing of one whose views you vehemantly disagree with, but where does it end? How long before YOUR views are illegal?
Humans are by definition imperfect, and so any laws we make will be imperfect as well. Just as Ben Franklin wrote "that it is better [one hundred] guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer [in prison]", so too the same principal to speach and communication applies: Better a hundred corrupt voices be heard than a single noble voice be silenced.