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posted by Odin on Aug 04, 2009 |
'Dog Park' by dmealiffe, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License Recently I read an article in the Gazette talking about a dog owner that lost a court case against a breeder in Ontario for comments he made on an online pets community. Back in 2004 and 2005, Lorie Gordon made several negative comments on www.pets.ca against the Paws R Us Kennel, a family-run business based in Shawville, Ontario. She was commenting on the poor health of a black Labrador retriever she bought from the kennel. On July 22nd, Gordon was found guilty of defamation and slandering by the Ontario Superior Court, and was ordered to pay $10,000 in damages to the owners, as well as $4,000 in legal proceedings. I find this news pretty troubling, especially since SeekOdin contains several comments that may be considered “slander". Moreover, SeekOdin actually allows users to post anonymously, which makes tracing the authors more difficult (although we do keep track of IP addresses, so maybe the ISP can track the internet surfer using this information along with the date/time of the post). Most other sites require registration using an email address before being able to participate. I decided against that for SeekOdin, precisely because I wanted to encourage honest and truthful comments, whether favorable or unfavorable. I believe that a lot of people might withhold on negative comments if they were required to provide their identities and email addresses. I don't know about everyone else, but I find this ruling goes against “freedom of speech". If things keep going this way, we're going to end up with a whole bunch of online communities with nothing but positive reviews. Not very useful to anyone if you want my opinion! I would personally like to protect the identity and anonymity of everyone that participated on SeekOdin. I want them (as well as myself) to stay out of trouble. Any lawyers out there have any tips to give me? Am I risking legal pursuit by allowing anonymous participation? Feel free to answer in the comments (I know you guys are expensive, but maybe you can make an exception this one time)... |
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reader comments:
| by s_baile, Ville-Marie, Centre / Downtown |
Aug 5 2009 6:40AM |
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| "Slowly and surely, the government will sink its claws into this unbounded freedom of expression we've found on the internet. The beauty of controversial websites is that, just like indie bands, as soon as one fades out ten new ones pop up. It just can't be controlled. As for SeekOdin's liability? I think the standard 'the views expressed here are not necessarily that of the author etc...' would do most of the trick, no?" |
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| by Odin, Westmount |
Aug 5 2009 8:20AM |
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| "s_baile, thanks for the comment. I do hope that that's enough to cover my butt, but I'm not so sure. If you read the full article from the Gazette, you will see that another forum was ordered to shut down because it allowed users to anonymously post negative comments about the mayor and police force (or some other public function) of a Quebec commune, or something like that." |
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| by s_baile, Ville-Marie, Centre / Downtown |
Aug 7 2009 10:24AM |
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"I know what you mean - but I think a line can be drawn between slandering and merely 'reviewing'. I think the courts would agree it is in the public interest to allow for honest 'reviewing' without fear of getting sued. Movie and book critics, Consumer Reports, they all rely on that kind of protection.
It seems the forum that was shut down was dedicated to slander. The pets forum was kept running I believe, because it is for honest reviews. If anything, any malicious users would be at fault (however unlikely.)
I guess if things get sticky, you can always move to the jungles of Vietnam and operate the website from there." |
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| by Odin, Westmount |
Aug 7 2009 12:29PM |
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| "I think I'd rather close the site than move to Vietnam. I don't actually depend on it financially :) It's just a side hobby with a (minor) income incentive." |
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about the blog
MTLRants© is Seek Odin's brand new blog, bringing you entries from our staff and other contributors. The blog will cover topics and issues related to SeekOdin's central themes. Mostly, it will deal with the difficulties and frustrations of dealing with service-related businesses in Montreal.
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