Slashdot Mirror
Canadian Supreme Court To Decide If Linking Is Publishing
An anonymous reader writes "Will Canada become a black hole in cyberspace? Or will it remain a country of which former prime minister Wilfred Laurier once said, 'Canada is free and freedom is its nationality.' According to p2pnet's Jon Newton, that'll be for the nine members of the federal Supreme Court to decide. Newton was sued by ex-Green Party of Canada financier Wayne Crookes for allegedly defaming him by linking to a story Crookes didn't like. Newton is now back home on Vancouver Island after traveling to Ottawa for the SCC hearing. Was it win or lose? It's an 'Epic Fail' for Crookes, Newton says. The Supreme Court reserved its decision. Its rulings are 'typically released six to eight months after a hearing,' according to the CBC in its report on the case. Says Ars Technica, 'As CIPPIC puts it, if Newton loses, the ruling could "chill hyperlinking which in turn undermines the communicative force of the Internet and deters innovation of new, expression-enhancing platforms that may not develop due to fear of defamation actions."'"
This could end Google in Canada
If the Supreme Court rules the wrong way, the decision won't stand.
Everybody from Google to Bell and Rogers will lobby heavily against this. This would certainly kill Google's business in Canada outright, seriously harm Microsoft through MSN/Windows Live and even result in less internet subscriptions for Bell and Rogers. Also, any Canadian news site would be doing a full court press against this. What's more, I don't see how any powerful companies would benefit from this wrong decision.
Rest assured that all these companies would lobby Parliament to change the laws so that this decision gets reversed.
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Isn't that like deciding whether posting someones telephone number, or postal address is the same as calling them or sending them a letter? It's a symptom of private agenda vs public interest. How deep do you really need to go, and why else waste the public time and money on something so obvious?
If they choose that to be the case, then they have to be consistent. Meaning the paper equivalency must also be considered publishing. So no more citing sources in essays.
Wherever the truth lies in this dispute, that initial linked p2pnet piece is horribly written and non-illuminating. There has to be a better story, not written by a six-year-old, that covers this case.
#DeleteChrome
It's like assembling a committee to determine if water is dry.
If I call the police and "link" them to the address of a burglary in progress, am I committing burglary?
Are the workers that install road signs which "link" bank robbers to the locations of the banks they rob guilty of robbery?
If a library's card catalog "links" a terrorist to a book on chemistry would not the librarians and publishers be guilty of terrorism?
If my website links to a page about ponies, and the domain is later transferred to a porn site, am I a then pornographer until I remove the link?
Did I just make Slashdot.org into the new PirateBay?
I wouldn't call it publishing... maybe aiding and abetting to publishing.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Dude, you just crashed my irony detector.
...and why should we care to not make the rest of his existence insignificant except as a footnote in history? He has already achieved all the historical significance he "deserves".
For every present, there is a past
what Canada decides?
reading that again it sounds like flamebait, sorry. What I mean is that the internet is an international phenomenon and while Canada or Nicaragua or whoever can decide whatever they want, most web sites and or businesses on the web are not fixed to a physical location. It's like raising corporate taxes. Companies will just go elsewhere or declare that they are doing X thing elsewhere where it is legal/cheaper.
Most of the media is making the point of the lawsuit solely about linking. The important point in the lawsuit is whether or not deliberately linking defamatory or libelous content (i.e you know what the linked content it) is the same as spreading defamatory or libelous statements.
The lawsuit is not about links for which you are not aware of the semantic content (i.e. search results from Google).
For example, I find a web page that incorrectly paints you as a pedophile. I link to it, and other likewise defamatory content, spread my link to your associates. I have written no defamatory content myself, but ....
what Canada decides?
reading that again it sounds like flamebait, sorry. What I mean is that the internet is an international phenomenon and while Canada or Nicaragua or whoever can decide whatever they want, most web sites and or businesses on the web are not fixed to a physical location. It's like raising corporate taxes. Companies will just go elsewhere or declare that they are doing X thing elsewhere where it is legal/cheaper.
Tell that to the poor sap who gets sued for linking to someone's Facebook page where a picture of a LOLcat was later changed to a comment stating "John Q. Public is an alocholc and a fagg! ROFL!" People can't run from or change unpleasant laws as easily as corporations do. And dare I say a lot of Slashdotters are Canadian.
You simple make something very common illegal and then you don't enforce the law.
Apart from the fact that this tactic does not seem to have worked historically in Canada the problem is that this is civil law not criminal. Hence "enforcement" is up to someone with enough money to afford lawyers. I imagine it will stand until the content on a website that the government itself links to is found objectionable. Assuming the website owner does not have deep pockets it will be the government itself getting sued and then watch how fast the law gets changed.
The only questions are: will the supreme court be smart enough to see this (it could affect them too if they link to external websites...assuming that you can actually sue a court?) and, if they aren't, whether the government is smart enough to see the consequences and fix them immediately without waiting to get sued.
To help seperate the demafation issue from the linking issue, here is some relevant reading of a precedent about publishing quotations: http://scc.lexum.umontreal.ca/en/2009/2009scc61/2009scc61.html
My read of it: the court leaves the jury a lot of leeway to infer intent of a writer based on common sense ... so the ruling on this new case will probably focus on what new defences (misunderstanding, possible edits of the document linked to, etc) a jury can consider, rather than letting the linker off the hook completely.
It's a good thing this is coming to court in Canada, and not in the America that already decided that linking to a Torrent is effectively sharing the material yourself.
Funny may not give karma, but +5 Informative never made anyone snort coffee out their nose.
Since this post mentions the Library of Congress, it publishes it. 140 characters IS enough for anybody, apparently.
Dude, you just crashed my irony detector.
That's impossible. Irons don't have operating systems or otherwise run software, so they can't crash.
And as for whether or not linking is publishing...
I hold this truth to be self evident that merely linking to a page such as my Dance Dance Revolution Hottest Party 3 Detroit Rock City Demo is not the same in any way shape or form as actually publishing my Dance Dance Revolution Hottest Party 3 Detroit Rock City Demo.
(And don't worry. It is not a goatse link in any way shape or form.)
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Justice Charron gets it, as did the lower courts. I'm therefor expecting the said "epic failure" for Charon's claim.
In addition, this this is a tempset in a teapot. The article is based on the desire of the news organizations to have something cool to talk about, rather that the recorded behavior of the courts.
In actual practice, courts are disinclined to make sweeping change is how a law is to be interpreted, and instead deal with the problem of "bad cases produce bad law" by writing very narrow verdicts.
Canadian courts in particular, when faced with massive failure of the law to meet its purpose, tend to send the law in question back to the legislature to be rewritten. If the supreme court were going to do something radical like define publishing the location of a defamatory article as equivalent to publishing the defamation, they'd had already said so, and put the government on notice they need to fix the law.
Instead they put it in the queue of boring stuff to write up in the next six months.
IMHO, Charron's radical claim is toast.
--dave (a philosopher, not a lawyer) c-b
davecb@spamcop.net
True, but the next paragraph contains this counter-argument:
But Jordan countered that internet users should be responsible enough to review material and make a judgement before linking to it.
And I don't see anywhere in any of the articles (not exhaustive coverage, admittedly) that anyone has pointed out that content can - and does - change after it is linked to. How can one be held responsible for that?
---
"I can't complain, but sometimes still do..." Joe Walsh
2. Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:
(b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;
http://laws.justice.gc.ca/eng/charter/1.html
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
I'm trying to decide if this is the most moronic, uninformed court case I've ever heard of. Come on Canadians! A link is a reference! How the hell is that publishing? And if by these politicians' utter depravity, they rule in Crookes' favor, I'm going to have a good laugh as they try to enforce this absolutely hilarious decision.
If you show someone else's page in an iframe or frameset, it's copying, even if the user has to click on something to make it appear.
The ethics must be based on the plain appearance of what is going on, not the implementation.
To some degree Amazon is indistinguishable from a library card catalog. Search for subject, title, keywords or other index key and copy the ISBN or Dewey Decimal number, submit and magically you have a book via the LINK PROVIDED.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
I may generate a link to my website or another, which is a perfectly logical thing to do. However many days later, someone posts something to that website. So, which came first, the chicken or the egg. Links don't have ways to validate dates that links were established.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada