Wayne Crookes sues the Internet
p2pnet.net news:- Vancouver businessman Wayne Crookes appears to have achieved something few, if any, have managed before him.
He’s succeeded in placing not merely a chill, but a major freeze, on the Net.
Last weekend what should have been a major story broke. As the Globe and Mail reported it, delicately:
Wayne Crookes, a former campaign manager of the Green Party of Canada, said he ’suffered an immense amount of frustration and emotional distress’ over postings on Google’s Blogspot.com, a free blog-hosting website, within an entry under his name in Wikipedia, and on openpolitics.ca, an interactive political forum set up by Michael Pilling, an Ontario and federal Green Party activist.
The lawsuit against Google was filed in British Columbia Supreme Court on April 16. It states that last summer, six anonymous defendants put libellous comments on Blogspot’s The Green Compost Heap under passages labelled ‘Wayne Crookes’ and the ‘Gang of Crookes.’
Wayne Crookes, a Vancouver businessman and Green organizer, is suing three Internet sites for libel.
The suit against Wikipedia was filed on April 17. In this case, an article on Mr. Crookes written under the pseudonym of ‘Indyperson’ repeated some of the comments that appeared on The Green Compost Heap.
The lawsuit against openpolitics.ca was made in May, 2006, and stems from postings in early 2005.
I and p2pnet are also named in Crookes’ libel suit, but I hadn’t received the writ at the time the G&M story was written.
Crookes is, to all intents and purposes, suing the Net and by anyone’s standards, that’s Big News. I don’t really think he has anything against me personally. So what, precisely, is the problem? His actions make it impossible to say —– without being sued, that is.
You’d think the Canadian media would be all over the story. But Nada. Nothing. Not a dicky bird. The clip above from the main Google news page was it. All of it. Yahoo did considerably better, but most (all?) of the links it produces are to blogs, not lead stories in the mainstream print or electronic media.
Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC) staff counsel David Fewer told me CIPPIC would be keeping a close eye on the proceedings, going on:
In a Web 2.0 world, anyone can be a publisher. In this way, the internet acts as a great engine for freedom of expression. Unfortunately, we’re seeing this benefit threatened by litigation targeting parties who are more and more removed from allegedly defamatory content.
Innocent intermediaries, disseminators, and participatory forums like wikis, blogs, and news sites facilitate public discourse, and shouldn’t have to go to court to defend innocuous practices such as merely linking to another website.
The EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) is also watching carefully. Senior EFF attorney Fred von Lohmann told me:
Any effort by Crookes to sue for defamation in Canada and enforce a judgment in the USA is going to run squarely into the First Amendment and the very clear legal immunities for online service providers under US law.
Online free speech simply couldn’t exist in a world where every online service provider has to worry about being sued in Canada for every comment posted by a user. I don’t think US courts are going to be friendly to that outcome.
But here in Canada, the freeze is on and three Canadians have admitted to me that they’re not commenting because they don’t want to end up on the libel hit list.
Who is Crookes?
He’s a, “Vancouver, British Columbia businessman who runs a business called ‘West Coast Title Search’,” says ZeroPaid. Is ZP a Canadian online publication? Nope. It’s American, and it goes on:
Since 1969 he has earned his living providing legal services to barristers and solicitors throughout British Columbia and elsewhere.
Crookes became a public figure in 2004 as the national GPC Campaign Manager in the Canadian federal election, 2004. After the election he remained the lead figure in the party’s management, as acting chair of the ERTC and chair of its successor, Management Committee. He remained in this role, and in the national campaign manager role, until he resigned immediately prior to the Canadian federal election, 2006.
As of 2007? Crookes appears to have no political role in any Canadian federal political party. In the period from 2000 – 2006 Crookes played very important roles in the financing and managing of the Green Party of Canada and to a lesser extent the Green Party of BC. During his tenure as party manager, the Green Party endured difficult period of infighting known as the GPC Council Crisis.
Since 2004, Crookes has become publicly known for use of libel suits against individuals who have commented on his role in the Green Party, and the forums, websites, and technology companies that hosted the comments.
Says Mike on TechDirt, another US site:
On Friday, we wrote about a guy who worked for the Green Party in Canada who was suing a whole bunch of sites, claiming libel. The problem was that he was suing sites like Google and Wikipedia for what its users had done – rather than the users themselves. In our comments, people pointed out that he’s apparently also sued Yahoo, MySpace and PBWiki (though, we haven’t seen anything to back that up Update: I’ve now seen the documents showing the claims against Yahoo and MySpace). The original story about this was in The Globe and Mail, though plenty of other sources picked up on it as well. One was the site P2Pnet.net, where Jon Newton wrote up a blog post about the lawsuits… and 15 minutes later was sued himself. Yikes. Newton notes that the only thing he did in his post was link to the potentially libelous post, which hardly seems worthy of getting sued yourself. Reporting on a libel suit doesn’t seem like it should make you liable for libel as well. Once again, all this is really doing is getting a lot more attention focused on this guy rather than hiding his critics. It’s difficult to see how that’s helpful.
To be fair, I don’t, and didn’t, think Crookes saw the post TechDirt mentions, and sued me 15 minutes later. Rather, it was a coincidence.
I live on Vancouver Island, an hour-and-a-half by ferry from the BC mainland, and just across the water from the city of Vancouver, and the process server didn’t knock on my door until early Saturday morning (April 21), about a quarter of an hour after my post went online. Why he left it until Saturday morning, I don’t know.
But I’m in good company. With me on the writ is the Wikipedia Foundation, which by 10:15 am PST today, still hadn’t seen its writ.
The Wayne Crookes Sues the Internet case is going to get interesting not only for Canadians, but for anyone, anywhere, who wants to be able to speak freely and openly online, without fear of being sued.
Jon Newton – p2pnet
Also See:
p2pnet – p2pnet in new online libel case, April 21, 2007
Globe and Mail – Internet hosts should be made to pay for libellous statements, suit contends, April 19, 2007
ZeroPaid – P2PNet gets sued again for ‘libel‘, April 24, 2007
TechDirt – Site Supposedly Sued For Just Linking To A Story That Potentially Libels Someone, April 23, 2007
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April 25th, 2007 at 1:30 pm
from an uninformed outsider from far away over the big pond:
are the canadian crook and the “pervert list” crook in the USA that had to apologise in a video, by any chance relatives?
if so, that might could explain his behaviour from a scientific POV; it might be in their genes then.
April 25th, 2007 at 1:39 pm
its crookes not crook
April 25th, 2007 at 2:06 pm
sorry, didn’t saw that.
April 25th, 2007 at 5:21 pm
‘Once again, all this is really doing is getting a lot more attention focused on this guy rather than hiding his critics. It’s difficult to see how that’s helpful.’
- well it makes more people talk about him, then he can sue them for libel, it’s the old you tell 2 people and they tell 2 people and… except it’s you tell 2 people, I’ll sue you, they tell 2 people I’ll sue them, …..
Wow how long before the *AA get’s in on this cash for lawsuits scam?
April 26th, 2007 at 7:09 am
Its funny I just noticed the two names sounds alike a lot
..
..anyway for those who don’t know the story read the links below and watch the video : This could happen to Wayne Crookes.
http://www.10zenmonkeys.com/2007/03/14/michael-crook-settlement-apology/
http://www.digg.com/tech_news/Dear_Internet_I_m_Sorry_Michael_Crook_apology_video
April 26th, 2007 at 10:53 am
Yep, Crookes NEEDS to take a look at this and LEARN a few things from Crook!
Isn’t it serendipitous that BOTH are “crooks”?????????
April 26th, 2007 at 11:09 am
It may be REMOTELY possible because when early immigrants came to the US through Ellis Island they were processed so fast that names were misspelled appearing to be different. E.G: Kueffer became Keefer or Kieffer. Some even CHOSE to change the spelling of their names or their names altogether (and [some immigrants] still do this to this day)!
However, this scenario is most likely improbable.
April 27th, 2007 at 5:20 pm
Newton, get over it, who cares about you or what you have to say? It is the height of self-delusion to even place yourself in the same sentence as the other defendants. You are not a journalist, just a hack, spouting off into an echo chamber of p2p geeks who hate the RIAA and record labels. If this happened to a journalist who had credibility maybe someone would write a story.
April 27th, 2007 at 8:32 pm
” Newton, get over it, who cares about you or what you have to say? ”
You seem to care enough to have earned a nickname
.
Gachnar. Seems to me you spend nearly as much time
here as Jon
Yes, you care a great deal.
Why ?
” It is the height of self-delusion to even place yourself in the same sentence as the other defendants. ”
Absolutely correct.
To place him in as a defendent for merely linking to
an article is rather …. delusional … one might even say
… frivolous. You’re right, gach, Jon shouldn’t be sued
for this, thanks for pointing it out.
” If this happened to a journalist who had credibility maybe someone would write a story. ”
It’s precisely this sites credibility, that make it a target
folks who have lawyers, and folks who are owned
by lawyers … wouldn’t you say ?
” If this happened to a journalist who had credibility maybe someone would write a story. ”
The point of such a broad scope of suits is to ensure
that no one can ever write a story about those with
wealth and power.
April 28th, 2007 at 9:22 am
I’m trademarking the terms “Sue” when used with “Internet” or “Net” or “teh 1nt3rwebs.”
Please send me your bank account details and I’ll remove the needed fees.
April 29th, 2007 at 2:52 pm
As was mentioned, this just draws more attention. I didn’t know who Wayne Crookes was or even have an interest in him at all. Since this came up, I’ve taken a little trip out into discovery land and turned up a few things to inform me. Lawsuits such as this do nothing to hide anything; they only add more curiosity to those who had no knowledge and no interest before.
May 1st, 2007 at 6:25 pm
what a moron!
April 17th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
LOUIS KESTENBAUM A SATMAR Chasid is being accused. WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) – A teenage girl has filed a $50 million lawsuit against a New York billionaire, saying he sexually abused her when she was 14.
Louis Kestenbaumâs attorney says the allegations are false and motivated by money. Kestenbaum is also the CEO of Fortis properties and the ODA a goverment funded organisation in the williamsburg section of Brooklyn NY
The girl, now 17, claims Louis Kestenbaum invited her to his Florida mansion in 2005 to perform a massage for $300. The lawsuit, filed in federal court, claims he demanded she remove her clothes, then sexually assaulted her.
The girl, her father and stepmother are seeking more than $50 million.
Joel kestenbaum the son of Louis kestenabum had no comments