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."

Comments

Rock and hard place.

[B5_geek]

Canada has always been stuck between a rock and a hard place (US & UK). We are kind of like the retarded step-brother, very polite but not taken seriously on our own (we have a nasty habit of tagging along to our 'Big Brothers'.)

I often wondered how long it would take the insanity of US & UK to reach us. I wonder if there are any jobs in the Netherlands for an english-speaking computer-geek Canuck. They look like the only safe haven from insanity that is infecting this planet.

Re:Rock and hard place.

[c6gunner]

I often wondered how long it would take the insanity of US & UK to reach us

REACH us? Buddy, we've pioneered so many forms of insanity that the yanks would have to rewrite their constitution in order to catch up to us.

We have no separation of church and state. We have no right to free speech. We can be prosecuted for thought crimes and "hate speech" in courts which do not follow any traditional legal structures, where you are presumed guilty until proven otherwise, and where truth is no defense. We have no right to defend our homes. We have no right to own and employ firearms in self defense. We don't even have the equivalent of the fifth amendment, let alone the Posse Comitatus!

If you think the US is bad, you haven't been paying much attention to what's going on at home.

Re:Rock and hard place.

[Have Brain Will Rent]

There's got to be some way to score that post higher than 5. Like maybe 50.

To add to c6gunner's list there is this: the Supreme Court of Canada stated that an accused is entitled to a defense, but not necessarily the best defence that could be mounted if the court allowed it. The reason given in that particular case was that it might discourage people similar to the purported victim from making complaints about other people similar to the accused (but not proven guilty) if the accused in this case were allowed the most effective defense available and he was therefore denied access to information that might have exonerated him.

In other words, "it's ok if we falsely convict you, and do it despite it being preventable, because it furthers the interests of a group whose members we like better than you."

Shame

[Aladrin]

Shame on any site that accepts 'anonymous' comments and then tracks email and IP.

And shame on the government for this ruling.

Re:Shame

[jsse]

Shame on any site that accepts 'anonymous' comments and then tracks email and IP.

And shame on the government for this ruling.

If a post violate a local law (e.g. child porn, bomb threats...) and the site owner failed to provide evidence that it was sent by outsider, it's very high chance the prosecutor would put a charge on the site owner.

Therefore, unless you live in a place where no law is in place to regulate Internet content, otherwise you'd better keep some tracks for your defense.

What does /. do with the IPs of Anonymous Cowards?

[PhotoBoy]

If I were to post this anonymously, would /. keep a record that I used my /. account to post it, even though outwardly it's anonymous? Do they also keep a record of the IP I used to post?

I looked briefly at the privacy T&Cs linked at the bottom of the page and it makes various noises about keeping non-identifiable aggregate information for stats, but it's not clear what is done with the data or what would happen if they received a legal requirement to reveal all data held about an anonymous poster.

Re:Anonymous speak Free speech

[Attila Dimedici]

You are right that the headline is not accurate, since Canada doesn't have free speech.
"Freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don't give it any value." -Canadian Human Rights Investigator Dean Steacy, responding to the question "What value do you give freedom of speech when you investigate?"