Wayne Crookes sues the Net: III
p2pnet.net news:- Lone Canadian businessman Wayne Crookes is in effect suing the Net and seen from one perspective, one could say he’s a brave man, fearlessly and single-handedly confronting some of the most powerful online entities. Because named in his lawsuits are Yahoo, Google, Wikimedia, and MySpace, owned News Corp.
But if he wins, he’ll put an end to any semblance of online freedom of expression in Canada which, as a direct consequence, might well become a shunned-by-all internet ghetto. If he wins, merely linking to a story could end in a libel lawsuit, with all that implies.
As I stress here, “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,” going on, “You’d think the Canadian media would be all over the story. But Nada. Nothing. Not a dicky bird.”
And the media on both sides of the border are still conspicuous by their seeming lack of interest.
Freedom of speech
Crookes, owner of Vancouver’s West Coast Title Search Ltd, says he’s been libelled by a long list of sites, firms and people, among them p2pnet.
But I’m in good company. Also named is Wikimedia which has, thankfully, very generously agreed to fold my case in with its own, and representing both me and Wikimedia is Canadian media lawyer and libel expert Dan Burnett who, not at all coincidentally, is in my corner in another freedom of speech lawsuit.
“The suit, launched by Sharman Networks’ Nikki Hemming, has attracted considerable international attention because of the parties involved – Sharman Networks is the Australian-based owner of Kazaa, the peer-to-peer file sharing service that last week agreed to pay the entertainment industry $100m (£53m) to settle ongoing litigation,” says a BBC story on the latter case.
Headlined, “Free speech, libel and the internet age,” it continues:
It also highlights the vulnerability of thousands of individuals to defamation lawsuits merely for providing access to other people’s comments. Both Sharman Networks and Hemming sued P2Pnet last spring, claiming that an article and accompanying comments posted by readers of the site were libellous.
Jon Newton, the owner of the site, has vigorously disputed the suit, pointing to the need to protect free speech and to ensure that defamation laws cannot be used to stifle comment.
Articles were hyperlinked
What have I done to incur Crookes’ wrath? Here’s what he says in his legal statement:
On or about July 18, 2006, an article entitled “Free Speech in Canada” written by the Defendant JON NEWTON was posted on the website www.P2Pnet.net, a website owned by the Defendant JON NEWTON with a url of www.p2pnet.net/story/9387. The website has worldwide circulation on the internet.
He quotes a section from the story, which deals with the Hemming case. It says, “I’ve just met Michael Pilling, who runs OpenPolitics.ca. Based in Toronto, he, too is being sued or defamation. This time by politician Wayne Crookes”.
Crookes says, “The words OpenPolitics.ca in the ‘Free Speech in Canada’ article were hyperlinked to the a website with a url of http://www.OpenPolitics.ca which has world wide circulation,” and, “The words ‘Wayne Crookes’ in the ‘Free Speech in Canada’ article were hyperlinked to the Wayne Crookes article which was posted on the website USGovernetics.com. By republishing the Wayne Crookes article, the Defendant JON NEWTON has libeled the Plaintiff.” His document goes on:
The Plaintiff has requested that the Defendant JON NEWTON delink his article ‘Free Speech in Canada’ from the Wayne Crookes article, apologize for, and repudiate the libel. The Defendant JON NEWTON has refused. By inference, the Defendant JON NEWTON also refused to delink his article from the OpenPolitics.ca website. This refusal is an aggravation of the libel.
Further, by refusing to delink his article from the Wayne Crookes hyperlink and the OpenPolitics hyperlink and by further acting in concert with the editors of Open Politics. ca, the Defendant JON NEWTON has conspired with the authors and publishers of those articles to libel the Plaintiff and the Corporate Plaintiff.
The torts herein were all committed within the Province of British Columbia and as a result of the distribution on the internet, the libel has been published throughout Canada and around the world.
As a result of the libels alleged the Plaintiffs have suffered damages.
PBWiki is another of the defendants in the Crookes vs The Net case and in Uncrooked, has links to four case documents.
1 – Crookes v. Openpolitics.ca, and several activists
Statement of Claim: crookes-v-openpolitics.pdf2 – Crookes v. Yahoo, MySpace, PBWiki, and several activists
Statement of Claim: Crookes-v-gpcMembers.pdf3 – Crookes v. Google
Statement of Claim: CrookesvGoogle.pdf4 – Crookes v. Wikimedia
Statement of Claim: Crookes-v-Wikipedia.pdfNamed are:
First lawsuit:
Frank Cameron; Conceve, Inc; Hayley Easto; Mark Francis; Kathryn Holloway; Catherine Johanssen; MySpace Inc; Gareth White; and Yahoo, Inc.Second lawsuit:
Wikimedia Foundation; Jon Newton; Anonymous 1-6; and, Domains by Proxy, IncThird lawsuit
Google Inc; and, Anonymous 1-6Fouth lawsuit
Stephen Fisher-BradleyFifth lawsuit
Michael Pilling; Hayley Easto; Warren deSimone; and, Craig Hubley.
Stay tuned.
Jon Newton – p2pnet
Also See:
BBC – Free speech, libel and the internet age, July 31, 2006
stress here – Wayne Crookes sues the Internet, April 25, 2007
CNET – RFID companies, record labels become allies, May 4, 2007
p2pnet – EU launches spy chip study, March 10, 2006
If your Net access is blocked by governBryan Adams slams Net radio hikement restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at thIs the endSurvey: How Did Copyright Infringement Become Equated with Robbery? (of the Net) nigh?zze University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, here for the p2pnet download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.
rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss | | Mobile – http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php | | And use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site
Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. Do bug your local politicians. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance. Don’t just complain. Do something!
May 6th, 2007 at 11:25 am
I wonder who is bankrolling Mr. Crookes ??
May 6th, 2007 at 4:20 pm
good question…
May 7th, 2007 at 11:51 am
Some people have earned their own money.
May 8th, 2007 at 2:10 am
True, and yet …
A lawsuit of THIS scale is extremely costly.
Extreme even for the most wealthy individual.
The most wealthy INDIVIDUAL that is.
With corporate backing, however, a suit like this becomes
easy.
Certain … entities .. stand to gan a great deal if Mr Crookes
is successful.
I wonder who is bankrolling this … really.
May 8th, 2007 at 2:01 pm
The suit says you refused to rmove te link. Were you actually asked to do this? How the hell is pointing to something Libel.
May 8th, 2007 at 5:47 pm
The big lie is that “linking” is being called “republishing.” It’s kind of like calling the process of telling someone about a book you read in the library “republishing.” It won’t hold up in court; it’s just too fucking ludicrous.
May 9th, 2007 at 12:12 pm
n/t
July 22nd, 2007 at 3:03 pm
Launch a countersuit against the prick. See how he likes living in a cardboard box with a mortgage.
April 4th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
[...] [↩]And I personally saw people scribbling website addresses as fast as they could [↩]In the Wayne Crookes case, even linking was considered as defamatory, which is completely insane [↩]There was no [...]