“The threat of lawsuits…might turn the Canadian political blogger into an endangered species.” The National, CBC, Thursday August 16th, 2007
The below news story aired on CBC The National last night, and takes a look at how the legal climate in Canada is already contributing to the “chilling” of free speech, and eventually may even force companies like Google and Wikipedia to block their sites in Canada. I’d elaborate on what I think of all this, but the last time I did that I got sued (a suit which I am currently defending). Michael Geist, one of the interviewees in the piece, is named on the same lawsuit as myself.
Whooee! Yer dang right there’s a chill in the air.
A coupla years ago, if CBC’s The National had an 8 minute segment on blogging, the Canajun boogeysphere would be erupting in posts discussing the report. Today, there’s precious little discussion. Boogers are scared to say boo, in case some nutjob decides to sue their sorryasses.
I’m wonderin’ if it might be helpful fer hunnerts an’ hunnerts of boogers to all link to the so-called libellous site. Then, alls he will have accomplished is to draw more attention to what he wants nobuddy to see.
The crybaby might just find that he’s as popular as that Judge Pearson, the suit-pants lawsuit nincompoop who tried suin’ the pore drycreaners when they lost his favourite pair o’ pants.
JB
I can’t get over how quiet everything has been on this thing… I didn’t even know about it until the CBC piece. The dry cleaning episode in DC is a good analogy, but Geist was right in the piece, Canada needs some kind of legislation on what the paramaters are on free speech on the Internet or just plain Everywhere. And who or what is responsible for the comments on my posts, or for the comments on the blogs I subscribe to or just have in my blogroll? Speaking of which I’ve just put you in mine.