Aint it messed up that his name is Wayne Crook? Weird coincidence.

“Freedom of Expression

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the founding document of the modern human rights movement, speaks of “freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want” as its core aspirations. Freedom of speech is guaranteed under international law through numerous human rights instruments, notably under Article 19 of the UDHR. The term freedom of expression is preferred within international conceptions of human rights, as freedom of expression is not confined to verbal speech but is understood to protect any act of seeking, receiving and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used. It therefore embraces cultural expression and the arts as much as political speech. Importantly, the exchange of opinions, ideas and information should be capable of being a public act, not something confined to private discourse, because it is in this sense that it underpins democratic freedoms such as the right to form political parties, the right to share political ideas etc. Freedom of expression is often regarded as a foundation right as its existence helps guarantee other rights and freedoms. Without freedom of expression, it would be difficult to guarantee many of the rights in the UDHR; social justice would not be obtainable; and good governance seriously hindered. “

http://www.democraticmedia.ca/blog-entry/canwest-media-bully

If BC law were applied as it’s actually written, it seems, we’d have very few political speech rights that could actually be exercised. See more at

http://seriouslyfreespeech.ca

http://cyberslapp.org

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081106.wisohunt06/BNStory/Technology/?cid=al_gam_nletter_techweekly

Pucky.

1. Allow those who have expressed no particular opinion to link freely to the debate without fear of being themselves sued. Done!

Without this, as you point out, any discussion suffers chilling effects.

2. Allow those who host open political debate on contentious issues to mediate it without being sued simply for mediating or for not pre-emptively vetting all comment before it is displayed. That should be addressed in rulings in the openpolitics.ca case itself.

Without this, no one will dare host anyone debating political decisions and figures prominent in parties and movements online. The rich discourse we have online will dry up. Or worse, selectively dry up with only movements supported by the rich able to defend.

3. Adopt a US-style “Sullivan” standard for public speech on contentious public issues. That is, public figures who voluntarily entered the public realm to work in public roles in political parties directly to influence public decisions, or accept roles in government itself, may be scrutinized and criticized almost without limit, because failing to allow this would have grave consequences (qualified privelege). In particular, ensure that people who doubt someone’s integrity or sincerity can publicly voice those doubts without fear that they or their associates will be targetted. This should be addressed in rulings in Stephen Harper’s SLAPP suit against the Liberal Party.

Without this, mediators will be required to be unduly interfere in the public issue debate and will invariably censor those who take a strongly critical view. Remember, political parties advocate changes to law that other parties do not. So from the perspective of each of those parties, the others are criminals, that is, they are doing things that “should be illegal”. This is the nature of politics, that everyone considers their opponents crooked and unethical almost by default. And if they didn’t, they’d get away with more…!

4. Ensure not only that liability does not accrue, but that the filing of suits itself is discouraged when debate is on public interest matters, i.e. SLAPP suits are discouraged by specific provisions prejudicial against the original plaintiff when countersued, or giving findings of fact deliberately useful in a human rights proceeding against the original plaintiff by any party whose speech is inhibited.

Without this, anyone seeking to silence specific critics who happen to be poorer than them can intimidate them into silence simply by filing suits that the plaintiff can afford to launch but the defendant cannot afford to defend. This becomes very unequal very quickly.

5. Ensure anonymity is protected in public issue debate to the same extent as it is with the secret ballot. That is, that civil discovery simply cannot be used to identify persons whose comment was confined to the public or political realm. Disclosure alone does harm.

Without this, civil discovery can be used to identify opponents by name and often also to identify their correspondents and allies. In the case of dissidents criticizing human rights violating regimes from safe haven countries this is devastating as it can result in the imprisonment, torture or death of innocent parties including themselves. This is especially dangerous if status to file libel suits is easily granted or lawyers acting for the plaintiff are careless or bribed to act against the court’s intent and release that information.

It’s critical for freedom of political speech that Wayne Crookes loses every single case with costs. See http://cippic.ca for a good list of the issues, especially
http://www.cippic.ca/defamation-and-slapps/
http://www.cippic.ca/online-anonymity-and-john-doe-lawsuits/

A conclusion that merely linking to an allegedly libelous statement is publication of libel, or that any mention of or reference to the libel is itself libel, or that passively providing a circuit carrying communication of the alleged libel is itself publishing libel would open a can of worms where someone who had a disagreement with what was said could sue anyone and everyone who said anything about it, and even newspapers, magazines and web sites which made a factual report of the alleged libel in the context of a news story, and even service providers and common carriers who provided the means of transmitting the alleged libel, could all be held liable.

Let’s all hope that idea gets squelched real fast.

Similarly, it may be nicer to call a crook a crooke, and a gang of same a “gange of crookes”, all omitting the proper noun signal of the capital C to avoid indicating anyone of unfortunate name by unintended accident. Though to be kind to posterity, this term might be confined to “a gange so utterlie incompetente that theyye incriminate and call attention to themsellves by means of noxious unjustifiable attac using dirtie liyers”, which is probably the original medieval definition anyway. Ah the English language is so very rich.

Cheers!

WELL DONE JON AND DAN BURNETT.

It is now in Germany also.

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/Kanada-Keine-Verleumdung-per-Hyperlink–/meldung/118062

http://translate.google.ca/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.heise.de%2Fnewsticker%2FKanada-Keine-Verleumdung-per-Hyperlink–%2Fmeldung%2F118062&sl=de&tl=en&hl=en&ie=UTF-8