And you thought the Green Party was filled with warm fuzzy treehuggers. Maybe, but then their is Wayne Crookes, a financier for the Green Party.
Make a pun, and pay the price:
The hosts of the speed-of-light world of Internet blogs and interactive websites that publish anonymous commentary should be forced to pay when reputations are damaged, says a former Green Party staff member who is suing three such sites.
Google, the online encyclopedia Wikipedia and openpolitics.ca, a Canadian political website based in Toronto, are being sued in Vancouver in a libel case that could change the way Internet opinion is monitored and published.
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."
"I resent very much irresponsible statements made very recklessly. I'm determined that the people who have acted so irresponsibly will find that there are consequences," Mr. Crookes said.
"I hope that the outcome is that people will realize they have obligations and that they will be forced to accept responsibility for their actions. The larger the organization, the greater the expectation that they will be held accountable for their actions."
Mr. Pilling, a former research head for the Green Party of Canada, confirmed that he was preparing to defend himself vigorously.
What is interesting is that this a Green on Green fight.
Here is a view of the impact on blogging:
In Canada there are more ambiguities, as Canadian libel law permits suits to succeed even if no false statements of fact are involved, and even if matters of public controversy are being discussed. In British Columbia, as part of "a spate of lawsuits" against online news sites, according to legal columnist Michael Geist, several cases have put key issues in online journalism up for rulings. Green Party of Canada financier Wayne Crookes filed a suit in which he alleged damages for an online news service that republished resignation letters from that party and let users summarize claims they contained. He had demanded access to all the anonymous sources confirming the insider information, which Geist believed would be extremely prejudicial to online journalism. The lawsuit, "Crookes versus openpolitics", attracted attention from the BBC and major newspapers, perhaps because of its humorous name. Crookes had also objected to satire published on the site, including use of the name gang of Crookes for his allies.
In the US, it is clear that Pilling can't be held responsible. In Canada, though, no one has established the legal precedents:
In the U.S. the Communications Decency Act protects service providers from being held liable for what their users say. In Canada the situation is more complex because there is no clear law when it comes to libel and Internet defamation.
Crookes is even going after Google.
Yeah, good luck with that.
Final word should go to our own legal expert to boil this down. As Rob Hyndman points out, now a lot of people have heard of "Gang of Crookes" than ever would have otherwise:
I would assume that step 1 in the litigation for the plaintiff will be to try to get at the identities of the anonymous commenters who allegedly defamed the plaintiff. But in this day and age, it seems inevitable that the suit will broadcast the case to a much larger audience than would ever have otherwise been the case.
Canadian bloggers will keep an eye on this.
