Canadian Court Sides With Online Anonymity

bs0d3 writes "Michael Geist said of a recent Canadian court ruling, 'Anonymous speech can be empowering — whistleblowers depend upon it to safeguard their identity and political participants in some countries face severe repercussions if they speak out publicly — but it also carries the danger of posts that cross the line into defamation without appropriate accountability.' Although I disagree that defamation is an acceptable reason for a court to find someone's identity, the outcome of this trial seems favorable. The court was not asked to determine whether the posts at issue were in fact defamatory. Rather, it simply faced the question of whether it should order the disclosure of personal information about the posters themselves so that someone could proceed with a defamation lawsuit. The court relied on 'Warman v. Fournier,' a previous Canadian defamation case and asked, '(1) Whether there was a reasonable expectation of anonymity; (2) Whether the plaintiff established a prima facie case of wrongdoing by the poster; (3) Whether the plaintiff tried to identify the poster and was unable to do so; and (4) Whether the public interest favoring disclosure outweigh the legitimate interests of freedom of expression and right to privacy of the persons sought to be identified if the disclosure is ordered." In this case the order to identify the poster was denied. Since the plaintiff did not identify the specific defamatory words, she failed to establish a prima facie case of defamation. Moreover, the court also ruled that the posters had a reasonable expectation of anonymity and that there were insufficient efforts to try to identify them."

Comments

I am amazed

[mfh]

With the current Harper government in power, I am totally amazed at this ruling. I applaud the judge for standing up for online anonymity.

Also:
RIP Jack Layton

Re:where do these people come from?

[_0xd0ad]

No, I think GGP's point was that defamation is a crime and you shouldn't expect to be able to freely break the law just because you're online and think you're anonymous. A court can issue a subpoena to find out who you are.

This Canadian ruling simply declined on the basis that the plaintiff didn't actually try to support her claim that she'd been defamed, therefore they weren't going to just willy-nilly rubber stamp a subpoena for her to find out the identity of someone she'd had a disagreement online.