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."

Comments

Re:Which raises an interesting question

[sedyn]

Freedom of expression is covered through the Charter of Rights and Freedoms .

The only thing that is really censored is hate speech (including Holcaust denial).

ISP shafted?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Only applies to hate by non-islamists

[deacon]

A student at the school handed in an eight-page Arabic-language essay illustrated with a burning Star of David and a machine gun. In one passage, he wrote: "Without thinking, Ahmed took his M-16 machine gun and threw the bombs and he showered the Jews, this resulted in the killing of the soldiers." The teacher to whom the paper was submitted it returned it with the comment, "God bless you, your efforts are good."

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.

Re:Only applies to hate by non-islamists

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

After the incident was publicized, the Ontario Ministry of Education was investigated and two teachers were suspended.

That is a very misleading statement. Very much indicative of your entire posts's dittohead spin. There was one teacher suspended and the teacher was suspended before the investigation in other words, the school's administration was doing its job - not promoting "islamic hate" as you claim.

Here's the press blurb the government issued that summarized the investigation.

It took me less time to debunk your post with google than it took you to write it in the first place. Next time, could you at least try to do a little background research before parroting the limbaugh "orthodoxy?"

Re:Wait a sec...

[IgnoramusMaximus]

It would make it rediculously easy to shut down a forum you have a problem with. Just flood the forum with trash constantly.

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.

Slow down there cowboys...

[Yaztromo]

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 a landmark decision, the tribunal ordered the men, one of whom ran the web-hosting service that carried the websites, to cease their hatemongering, levied penalties totalling $13,000 and awarded the complainant $5,000. It is believed to be the first time a Canadian Internet web-hosting service has been found liable for hate messages.

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.

Re:Slow down there cowboys...

[Yaztromo]

Then what can you do to avoid hate speech laws? Popular speech doesn't need protection. Any serious attempt at freedom of speech MUST protect unpopular speech, or it doesn't protect anything.

You have the wrong idea about Canada's hate speech laws. Here's wher eyou can read up on them yourself:

http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/C-46/181181.html#rid- 181219

In brief:

• It's illegal in Canada to incite genocide,
• It's illegal in Canada to incite hatred towards a group in public (private communications in this regard is permitted),
• You can't be convicted of an offense under this section if (and I'll quote the criminal code directly here):
  • (a) if he establishes that the statements communicated were true;
  • (b) if, in good faith, the person expressed or attempted to establish by an argument an opinion on a religious subject or an opinion based on a belief in a religious text;
  • (c) if the statements were relevant to any subject of public interest, the discussion of which was for the public benefit, and if on reasonable grounds he believed them to be true; or
  • (d) if, in good faith, he intended to point out, for the purpose of removal, matters producing or tending to produce feelings of hatred toward an identifiable group in Canada.

So there you have it. You can stand up and saw "I hate ${IDENTIFIABLE_GROUP}" all you want in Canada. But you can't incite others to actively hate another group, or to perpetrate violence towards another group. It's simple, and staright forward, and doesn't prevent you from hating whomever you want to hate, or from telling other people you hate said group. You simply can't use it to incite others to hate and violence against said group.

Yaz.

No, you wait a sec...

[Yaztromo]

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.

Re:No, you wait a sec...

[Yaztromo]

Where do those things happen? Please tell me that you don't think they are common in the US...

Methinks you need a history lesson:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_racial_violence_ in_the_United_States

Let's see -- in the 20th century alone I count 32 riots incited due to race in the US. This isn't counting the 2001 Cincinnati riots.

The frequency of cross burning and lynchings are a bit harder to state here, but in the 20th century were sufficiently common (admittedly moreso in some parts of the country than others).

As for denying people the right to vote, you should probably read up on the entire American Civil Rights Movement. And perhaps about the murder of civil rights workers who were trying to help register disenfranchised Black voters. Or perhaps you should read up on the problems with the voters list in Florida during the 2000 US Presiedntial Election

These are sufficiently serious problems that the fact that they happen at all is too common. I won't pretend that Canada has a perfect record in this regard -- but compared to the US we're orders of magnitude better. The only reference to a race riot in the 20th century in Canada that I could find was from 1933 (although I do wantt to note that there was a riot in Toronto in 1992 that coincided with the Rodney King riots in LA, it seemed more opportunistic and involved people of all races. It's hard to see what the motivation would be for it, considering Canada has no say over the laws, courts, or police forces of the United States. But who ever said a riot has to make sense?).

Yaz.

Re:Summaries

[IgnoramusMaximus]

But, regardless of who owns what, one should have a right to speak out. ( yes, i know its not legal up there, but that doesnt make it any less wrong to restrict speech )

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.

Re:Summaries

[werewolf1031]

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.