Canada's Wayne Crookes Sues the Net

newtley writes "Wayne Crookes, the Green Party of Canada's ex-financier, is in effect trying to sue the Internet. He's going after the Wikipedia, Google, and openpolitics.ca (run up by federal Green Party activist Michael Pilling) claiming he's suffered, 'an immense amount of frustration and emotional distress' over postings. Some 15 others may also have been targeted. "Mr. Crookes seems to be 'trying to unwrite history,' Pilling says. 'He was a central figure in the growth of the Green Party. His actions were highly controversial and if we have freedom of speech in this country, people should be allowed to talk about them.'" Newtley adds in a posting submitted 121 minutes later: "Literally 15 minutes after I posted [the foregoing], there was a knock on my door. It was a writ server telling me I, too, have been named in a lawsuit launched by Wayne Crookes..."

Comments

this is a useful reminder

[rucs_hack]

Things like this help us remember why we have the right to free speech. It's because of people trying to remove our right to speak out against them, just like is happening here.

It's sometimes difficult for young'uns to remember that the internet, in it's populer worldwide usage form at least, is still very young. A great many people, organisations and countries were caught off guard by the freedom it gave for comment, and are still trying to remove that freedom.

Their efforts are going to fail, but not because of any moral or ethical issue, simply because of evolutionary principles. The internet is evolving faster then it can be censored. If, and this I doubt, but if they manage to censor all the current expression methods on the internet, more will be created to fill the gaps, and more. It's a fight that can't be won.

The only thing we need worry about is whether 4chan becomes the dominant player in the free expression market :-)

Re:this is a useful reminder

[ScrewMaster]

The judiciary can make determinations on specific civil suits, after the fact, but there is no prior restraint.

Which is an incredibly important distinction that is lost on some of the other posters here. The Founders were not (so far as I can tell) attempting to make us exempt from the consequences of what we say. They were very much aware of the potential consequences of opening one's mouth, or of setting ideas to paper.

They did, however, want us to have the power to speak in the first place, no matter what, and the biggest single threat to that ability is government itself. That fact is no less true today.

Re:this is a useful reminder

[tomstdenis]

I have no idea what your ranting about. I didn't vote NDP. And I'm pro-individual rights, which includes the rights to live safely (free from ridicule, contempt, torment, etc). I was simply replying to the parent suggesting that libel is real, does affect people, and there are boundaries that civilized people don't cross.

The idea that anonymous users exist on the net is an excuse to publish libel is nonsense. If you run a message board [or equiv] you should be held liable for any and ALL anonymous postings. After all, you're the one who is publishing it. I think it's reasonable that people moderate their websites such that libelous content is not widely distributed.

If that means changing existing website designs to disallow anonymous posts to become immediately published so be it.

Take a look at this for instance. Not once did I "spam" usenet about the book. I posted one message in an on-topic usenet group (where I've was an active participant for the last 7 years) about the book, some asshole then took that post and reposted it to a hundred other groups.

Amazon was at one point hosting reviews that read such as [from memory] "I would never buy this book as he's a usenet spamming jerk. This book clearly is not worth buying, etc, etc..." While amazon was nice enough to take down the reviews [which were posted before the book was in print] they didn't remove the "discussion" threads which are still there today.

While I don't think that's the only reason the books aren't selling, I have to assume that it has had an impact on some of the sales, at the very least, one sale.

And what did I do to deserve this treatment? Be an outspoken advocate of free software, open source cryptography, and an enemy of snake oil. Because someone didn't like how open I was, how generous I was to give out free knowledge and software they decided to post spam, kiddie porn and other nonsense with my name on it. It wasn't like I was actively attacking others. In fact, the last round of joe-jobs before I just quit using usenet altogether were people re-posting my research posts [I had optimized my ECC implementation that I give out in LibTomCrypt].

Basically some guy decided he didn't like me so he nearly ruined my life (hint: you consider awful things when you're being labeled a kiddie porn peddler).

Is that what living in a "free" society is like?

God help us all then when some random asshole on the web decides to have it in for you. Maybe the next time someone does the same to someone else (yourself, a friend of yours, a family member), someone will respond with violence. In my case, there were times were I was afraid someone would mail a bomb, or worse, come to my house looking for a fight.

People should be responsible for what they write, and people should be responsible for what they host.

Tom

Re:submitter's conflict of interest

[bhouston]

Strange, my original comment was moderated as flamebait. First time one of my comments has been moderated as such, must be having an off day. I still think the individual who submitted this story did so for self-interested PR reasons. The individual who submitted this story has published negative information on the individual who has now filed suit and has continued this pattern by misportraying/ridiculing the suit. This type of behavior is discoverable in court.