When does some material cross the line from good taste into actionable legal wrong?
The most interesting area developing is the area of internet defamation. Defamation, or libel and slander, is the act of publishing or saying untrue things about someone to third parties – statements that diminish the person’s reputation in the eyes of others. If I print a horrible article about someone in a magazine, that magazine (and me) might well expect to be sued.
What happens with the internet? Where is it published? Can you get away with saying whatever you want, just because the information is being relayed by way of electronic impulses? It seems not. In Canada, as in other jurisdictions, there is a growing trend to deal with the scurrilous material on the internet.
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Alberta had one of the first such cases, called Vaquero Energy v. Weir. An investor was displeased with how the company was being run and how the stock price was doing. He wrote some bad things about the company president in chatrooms or blogs on the net. He questioned the president’s sanity and ability, and compared him to dictators and terrorists like Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.
This person denied being the one who wrote these things, but computer experts were able to run a trace to his computer. He was found liable, and judgment entered against him including judgment for punitive damages for his bad behaviour.
The biggest problem is the anonymous nature of websites. However, experts in the field can often track down who is running the machine posting this material to the web.
There is another recent case of note. An employee wasn’t happy with his boss, so he arranged for all the company’s website inquiries to be re-routed to a site containing pornography.
The employee left for holidays, leaving a shambles behind him. When the employer found out, it sued, was successful, and was awarded $10,000.
The judge noted that the internet is a particularly vicious way to defame someone because it is “instantaneous, seamless, interactive, blunt, borderless and far-reaching.”
The judge left out the word “anonymous.” This may be because in Canada and the United States, courts are becoming more proactive in assisting aggrieved parties to discover who is defaming them online.
For example, an October 2009 case from Tennessee upheld a claimant’s right to subpoena Google’s records to assist in determining the identity of someone who was writing about the claimant on the internet.
If you can prove your case, the amount a court will award varies wildly. I have seen cases from $500 to $100,000. In Saskatchewan, a disgruntled person made accusatory postings about a crown prosecutor; $50,000 was awarded.
Attacking someone on the internet has become so widespread that there are actually companies you can hire to rehabilitate your on-line reputation and minimize damage to your person or business.
So while you may feel anonymous when posting your opinions to the web, think again. You could end up being the target in a lawsuit, and pay out substantial sums of money.
