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

Mr. Crookes?

[statusbar]

Nominative determinism?

--jeffk++

submitter's conflict of interest

[bhouston]

The submitter of this post is in a position of conflict of interest and appears to be using SlashDot as a means to denigrate the individual behind the lawsuit. As it is clear from newtley's post, newtley himself is highly been involved in whatever shenanigans that are going on here. It is unfortunate and dishonest that newtley is using this forum as a platform to smear his opponent. Just from newtley's egregious behavior here, I can imagine that aspects of this case have more merit that he is portraying.

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.

Re:submitter's conflict of interest

[bhouston]

The submitter is trying to "warn others" about what exactly? The case is about libel, the spreading of false information that is designed to cause harm to a person's reputation and their ability to conduct themselves in society. Being able to libel someone is not a right, it is not about freedom of speech, it is not about the truth. Whether this is in fact libel is not for me to decide, since I don't have the facts, but if it is this libel, Crookes is within his right to sue those that are purposefully trying to cause him harm for damages. I don't think he'll have much success with Google, but the individuals behind it should be held accountable if it is indeed libel, even if they are trying to be anonymous here or on Wikipedia.

Re:submitter's conflict of interest

[bhouston]

You do realize that this is formally a "libel case" as per the G&M story. This means that Crooke is alleging and will have to prove in court that the material in question is of an untrue nature. Thus from Crooke's perspective, this is not a case about "negative information" but about untrue information. Of course Crooke could be wrong, if he is, he sure will be wasting a lot of money on these suits.

You also claim that this lawsuit is a SLAPP. But typical SLAPPs lawsuits differ from this one though in an important way, Crooke has sued two very large firms that have more than enough money to defend themselves: Google and Wikipedia. SLAPPs, since they are based on intimating people who can't afford to defend themselves, usually are targeted only against small folk, not the big guys. Google and Wikipedia are unlikely to fold simply because the lawsuit was filed, and thus I do not believe this particular lawsuit of Crooke can be classified as your SLAPP.

Re:submitter's conflict of interest

[lordmatthias215]

I'm calling BS on this statement. Nothing in this guy's post could honestly be taken as smear- not any more than any other /. article. The fact of the matter is that this Crookes man doesn't like what is being posted about him on open forums, and is suing the editors of said forums for comments that not only did they not make, but that they disavow any ownership of in their legal disclaimers, as does any open forum. Furthermore, Michael Piling, head of OpenPolitics, even edited the offensive material, only to have the original material reposted by the user. How is Piling deserving of a lawsuit for something that is not only not his fault, but that he tried to correct to the wishes of Crookes? It'd be one thing if the lawsuit was for refusing to release the names or IP addresses of the users commiting libel, as that could be (mis)construed as aiding and abetting criminals, but even that would be a pretty weak case. Furthermore, I notice that the lawsuit against Wikipedia was made April 16, though Crookes' entry on the site was cut to a stub and protected nearly a month earlier, on March 19. Besides, he will need to prove to a court that the statements made on these sites were not only false (which shouldn't be too hard) but made with malignant intent something that will be nearly impossible to prove against anonymous users, and absolutely impossible to prove against the hosts of public forums who have made efforts to edit, remove, and block said harmful statements from appearing on their sites.

In tomorrow's news...

[HerrEkberg]

247 lawsuits filed against a Mr. Anonymous Coward for postings causing "immense amounts of frustration and emotional distress".

Downtime

[nurb432]

So tahts why slashdot was down earlier today, they were erasing all the evidence.

"oops, harddrive crash... nothing to see here judge"

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]

Consider reading the code section 298 states

298. (1) A defamatory libel is matter published, without lawful justification or excuse, that is likely to injure the reputation of any person by exposing him to hatred, contempt or ridicule, or that is designed to insult the person of or concerning whom it is published.

Note the "without lawful justification or excuse." Section 300 states if it's false the punishment is 5 years, and section 301 blankets it with a 2 year sentence regardless. (that is, upto). So you can get more time for a false statement, but true or not, you can still be found guilty of libel.

It's in the publics interest if he messed with party money [or whatever]. If the allegations are false, then whoever published them can be found guilty of defamatory libel.

However, suppose he had an embarrassing hobby (that was otherwise legal), and it was paraded in public to mock and ridicule him. If the publication causes him harm [loss of job, contempt of peers, etc] it can be found to be libel, regardless of whether it's true or not.

Tom

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

Self defeating strategy

[Anonymous Coward]

I had never heard of this guy before. Now I have heard of him and I think he's an idiot. He has found an amazingly effective way to destroy his own reputation.

Re:Proof once again

[Mantour]

Indeed, straight from the Chief Justice Herself, Right Honourable Beverley McLachlin http://www.scc-csc.gc.ca/aboutcourt/judges/speeche s/ComparativeView_e.asp That said, the debate isn't new in fact, http://www.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~shallit/libel3.html decribes how lawsuit can be used to shout down criticism through intimidation. Jeffrey Shallit http://www.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~shallit/ is vice-president of Electronic Frontier Canada http://www.efc.ca/. One of us!

Al Gore

[truckaxle]

All I can say is that Al Gore better get a good lawyer....