Slashdot Mirror
Canadian Court Orders Site To ID Anonymous Posters
An anonymous reader writes "A Canadian court has ordered
the owners of the FreeDominion.ca to disclose all personal information on eight anonymous posters to the chat site. The
required information includes email and IP addresses. The court ruled that anonymous posters have no reasonable expectation of privacy, a major blow to online free speech in Canada."
I'm behind 7 proxies
I noticed the blogger doesn't mention anything about the case itself. I wonder how knowing the particulars of the case might effect the response of slashdot posters.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Saying something anonymously is not part of that definition.
Anonymous expression has always been a cornerstone of free speech/expression. The only way you can say it's not is to ignore the centuries of western commentary on exactly this subject.
The court ruled that anonymous posters have no reasonable expectation of privacy
I wonder what then the court considers to be a "reasonable expectation of privacy"? Sorry, here or anywhere else, when I click the "post anonymously" button I have a reasonable expectation of privacy. Now what they happen to log etc I can understand, but there's an expectation of at least a measure of privacy. If Joe Troll emails /. asking for my IP I expect them to say get lost. But if they get a subpoena I expect them to get the IP. That's where "reasonable" lies in my opinion.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Anonymity has a higher purpose than being used only for hiding behind while making threats/posting illegal activity.
It is one of the foundations of freedom of speech and democracy, allowing citizens to voice their concerns and opinions without fear of prosecution or ridicule.
It reminds us to place principles before personalities, allowing logic to take precedent over emotions.
P.S. It's a bit ironic to hear an admonition to "be brave for once and say what you want in the open" - from an Anonymous Coward. LOL. Good job. Alanis Morrisette would be proud.
Sorry, here or anywhere else, when I click the "post anonymously" button I have a reasonable expectation of privacy.
Why? I won't defend the court's decision, but putting on a mask when in public doesn't give you a reasonable expectation of privacy. Why should putting on a mask on the internet do so?
Saying something anonymously is not part of that definition.
Common Sense would indicate otherwise.
Obviously, you didn't RTFA, or google for any relevant background information about the case. In Canada, you cannot simply say anything you want if what you want to say is deemed "hate speech" by a tribunal of the Canadian Human Rights Commission. As I understand it, if you are found "guilty" by this tribunal for offensive speech, you could be fined several thousands of dollars. That, in itself, warrants "a fear of persecution."
It's called an anonymous informant and a journalist.
"Knowledge is the only instrument of production that is not subject to diminishing returns" -Journal of Political Econom
I am a bit fuzzy on the difference between free speech and the right to stay anonymous.
It would seem to me that anonymity is not a requirement for free speech, online or otherwise.
What's to stop the internet-equivalent of standing up and shouting "Fire!" in a crowded movie theater?
Anonymity, IMHO, is actually detrimental to civil discourse - it gives individuals the idea that there are no consequences to what is said in a public forum. What we say in public life always has consequences - why should the internet be different?
Visiting most online discussions is like watching the monkeys at the zoo, and the risk of being hit with a lump of flying feces is just as high.
I must disagree:
You disagree that western political philosophy has anonymous speech as a central part of free speech/expression? Then you'd be disagreeing with reality. One only has to look at the Federalist papers to show you wrong.
western governments have historically ruled against the protection of anonymous speech
Western governments have routinely subverted the teachings of western political philosophy, but that has little bearing on what I said.
however, free speech has traditionally been protected.
Actually you can probably find more rulings against "free speech" than you can "anonymous expression".
Of course, it does.
In some places wearing a mask would be illegal -- precisely because people are not supposed to expect privacy there.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Well, except for the fact that one ruling concerning anonymous posters will affect ALL anonymous posters everywhere within Canada.
The Internet is all-or-nothing in this case. If you can prosecute one case of slander and libel, you can prosecute all cases, including "statement critical of the Führer and The Party", which is the scary part of it.
Combine all the efforts underway and you'll see where this is heading. Censorship because of the children, where they lock you up in prison for making the banlist public. Somehow, these banlists always include certain political opponents, but that's just a coincidence. Either way, lock everyone up who questions the Child Porn Ban List, because Children are holy.
Then ID'ing anonymous posters, next forcing webmasters to present ID when setting up a public servers and then we're very very very close to the requirement of having each and all typewriters registered with the Stalinist Party.
This ain't a slippery slope fallacy, because we're already sliding down as we speak, and we're sliding fast. They're already railing up against "unsensible" and "provocating" comments which include pro-catholic, anti-catholic and of course anti-muslim opinions. We have that in Denmark, The Netherlands and the UK already, but it's still only a handful of cases. But as I said, we're having quite a ride on the slippery slope which people have foreseen years ago and were dismissed with Godwin's Law. Well, pessimism can be true sometimes.
While there is lots of bullshit in the US today, this isn't it. Anonymous speech is particularly protected in the US. Please leave us out of it.
What this says to me is that anyone running a service, anonymous or not, needs to be thoughtful about their own data retention policies.
For instance, I might want to keep finer-grained detail for a short while, to assist in troubleshooting or incident handling.
Otherwise, it's probably just fine to keep more terse logs for a longer period of time. My understanding is that you can't be forced to divulge information you simply don't keep, if regular log rotation is part of your usual business process. The point is, it should probably be part of your usual business process, as it's too late to delete once the lawyers are involved.
I often wondered how long it would take the insanity of US & UK to reach us.
Really? Because I often wonder why it happens every goddamn time we elect the Conservatives, and why nobody remembers this the next time.
This judgement has no effect on free speech in any case, merely on the right to anonymity, a different question entirely. On the topic of free speech, Oliver Wendell Holmes (an American Supreme Court Judge) put it very well. "The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theater". Not even in the United States is the right to free speech absolute - nor would any sane person want it to be.
It sounds like Canada must be married to Australia with this nonsense court ruling. Must we all now go to a public library or internet cafe in order to be able to post anonymously? Somebody should act up and get rude and loud until governments get the message. Freedom of communications is not in the hands of governments to regulate. This freedom belongs only to individuals not to states.
No, its a major blow to free speech in general.
Its a short step from this to IDing a person via a 'traffic camera' at a physical rally, especially as drivers licenses are starting to be scanned and entered into facial recognition databases.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Due to the fact that rights tend to overlap, rights always have limitations. The old saying "your right to swing your fist ends where my face begins" comes to mind.
Free speech, therefore, has limitations. This is even true in the United States. For example: slander.
We do have a constitutional right to free speech within the legal limitations, just as the Americans have a constitutional right to free speech within their legal limitations. Yes, we have more limitations than the Americans do, and yes I believe that Canadian law goes too far with its limitations on speech. However, this doesn't change the fact that Mr. Steacy's assertion that free speech is "an American concept" and that "Canada doesn't have free speech" is incorrect.
"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." -- Albert Einstein
If I'm reading the case correctly, it appears that a jury decided that the anonymous poster:
1) posted deflamatory remarks, and
2) posted IP-protected material (copyright violation, whatever)
And now at the jury has decided this, they're summoning the website to hand over the logs so they can procecute.
I'm not sure what I see wrong with that. When someone breaks the law, they broke the law.
A different issue is whether the website should be keeping those logs, but that's not what this is aboot, eh?
-David