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-- BC court ruling -- be careful what you say about other people on the internet
BC court ruling -- be careful what you say about other people on the internet
Since ive seen many libelous remarks made on here against certain people and establishments, i thought this article was relevent.
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| GREG JOYCE Thu Jan 12, 9:02 PM ET VANCOUVER (CP) - A B.C. Supreme Court judge has awarded 11 plaintiffs - nine of them teachers - a total of $681,000 in compensatory and punitive damages against a woman who defamed them in what the judge described as a "shockingly vicious attack." Justice Jacqueline Dorgan, however, noted in her 92-page judgment that "there may be no real hope that the plaintiffs will actually be compensated in damages" levied against the defendant, Susan Pearl Halstead. Despite the judgment, the judge said Halstead continued to "assert the truth" of her allegations and continued to publish her defamatory statements on the Internet regarding some of the plaintiffs. While the judge ordered Halstead to refrain from repeating the defamatory statements, she also expressed the opinion that there was a possibility Halstead would continue to publish them on the Internet. The judge said Halstead's "shockingly vicious attack upon, and her manifestly fictitious account of, each of the plaintiff's character and conduct is deserving of rebuke." Nine of the plaintiffs are teachers, one is a retired school board trustee and one is a parent. All were involved with School District 71, the Comox Valley School District on Vancouver Island. The judge also castigated Halstead for her decision not to participate in the trial. She said Halstead effectively thought she was "judgment proof" and didn't attend "in an effort to dissuade the plaintiffs from proceedings." The court said Halstead was a longtime community volunteer who had become focused on her concern that certain teachers, school board officials and parents had acted improperly. "The defendant has posted her views, including very serious allegations of manifestly improper conduct, on Internet websites, chat rooms and via e-mail." It's not clear from the judgment why the defendant engaged in the campaign of defamation but the judge said that since about 1997 "Ms. Halstead has been highly conflict-driven, waging battles with everyone from parents to teachers, trustees and the superintendent of schools. The plaintiffs, who received varying amounts of damages depending on the degree of defamation, were Edmund Newman, Charlotte Elizabeth Harvey, Roberta Ling, David Harvey, Kenneth Piercy, Elizabeth Eakin, Andrew Chisholm, David Halme, John Hurley, David Morrow and Gale Wheeler. Seven of the plaintiffs were labelled as "bully educators" and "least wanted educators" on the "B.C.'s least wanted page" of Halstead's website, the judge said. The plaintiffs' lawyer, Howard Mickelson, said the judge "recognized the important role a court in appropriate cases can play in restoring the reputation of people who have been the victims of this kind of nasty, vicious campaign." "The significance of the size of the damage awards and the granting of punitive damages speaks to the seriousness with which the court felt exemplary professionals had had their reputations unfairly tarnished." The judge also lauded the conduct of the teachers during the trial and said their communities "deserve no less than the full participation of these individuals, free from the shadow cast by Ms. Halstead's defamatory statements." |
Annoying someone via the Internet is now a federal crime (in the US). Scary!
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By Declan McCullagh Published: January 9, 2006, 4:00 AM PST Annoying someone via the Internet is now a federal crime. It's no joke. Last Thursday, President Bush signed into law a prohibition on posting annoying Web messages or sending annoying e-mail messages without disclosing your true identity. In other words, it's OK to flame someone on a mailing list or in a blog as long as you do it under your real name. Thank Congress for small favors, I guess. This ridiculous prohibition, which would likely imperil much of Usenet, is buried in the so-called Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act. Criminal penalties include stiff fines and two years in prison. "The use of the word 'annoy' is particularly problematic," says Marv Johnson, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. "What's annoying to one person may not be annoying to someone else." It's illegal to annoy A new federal law states that when you annoy someone on the Internet, you must disclose your identity. Here's the relevant language. "Whoever...utilizes any device or software that can be used to originate telecommunications or other types of communications that are transmitted, in whole or in part, by the Internet... without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass any person...who receives the communications...shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than two years, or both." Buried deep in the new law is Sec. 113, an innocuously titled bit called "Preventing Cyberstalking." It rewrites existing telephone harassment law to prohibit anyone from using the Internet "without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy." To grease the rails for this idea, Sen. Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, and the section's other sponsors slipped it into an unrelated, must-pass bill to fund the Department of Justice. The plan: to make it politically infeasible for politicians to oppose the measure. The tactic worked. The bill cleared the House of Representatives by voice vote, and the Senate unanimously approved it Dec. 16. There's an interesting side note. An earlier version that the House approved in September had radically different wording. It was reasonable by comparison, and criminalized only using an "interactive computer service" to cause someone "substantial emotional harm." That kind of prohibition might make sense. But why should merely annoying someone be illegal? There are perfectly legitimate reasons to set up a Web site or write something incendiary without telling everyone exactly who you are. A law meant to annoy? FAQ: The new 'annoy' law explained A practical guide to the new federal law that aims to outlaw certain types of annoying Web sites and e-mail. Think about it: A woman fired by a manager who demanded sexual favors wants to blog about it without divulging her full name. An aspiring pundit hopes to set up the next Suck.com. A frustrated citizen wants to send e-mail describing corruption in local government without worrying about reprisals. In each of those three cases, someone's probably going to be annoyed. That's enough to make the action a crime. (The Justice Department won't file charges in every case, of course, but trusting prosecutorial discretion is hardly reassuring.) Clinton Fein, a San Francisco resident who runs the Annoy.com site, says a feature permitting visitors to send obnoxious and profane postcards through e-mail could be imperiled. "Who decides what's annoying? That's the ultimate question," Fein said. He added: "If you send an annoying message via the United States Post Office, do you have to reveal your identity?" Fein once sued to overturn part of the Communications Decency Act that outlawed transmitting indecent material "with intent to annoy." But the courts ruled the law applied only to obscene material, so Annoy.com didn't have to worry. "I'm certainly not going to close the site down," Fein said on Friday. "I would fight it on First Amendment grounds." He's right. Our esteemed politicians can't seem to grasp this simple point, but the First Amendment protects our right to write something that annoys someone else. It even shields our right to do it anonymously. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas defended this principle magnificently in a 1995 case involving an Ohio woman who was punished for distributing anonymous political pamphlets. If President Bush truly believed in the principle of limited government (it is in his official bio), he'd realize that the law he signed cannot be squared with the Constitution he swore to uphold. And then he'd repeat what President Clinton did a decade ago when he felt compelled to sign a massive telecommunications law. Clinton realized that the section of the law punishing abortion-related material on the Internet was unconstitutional, and he directed the Justice Department not to enforce it. Bush has the chance to show his respect for what he calls Americans' personal freedoms. Now we'll see if the president rises to the occasion. |
meh....been over the whole libel thing already...besides....I have good lawyers anyways
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