Chill

It was uncharacteristically quiet in Left Blogistan today, with surprisingly little schadenfreude cake being served up over the libel suit(s) launched yesterday against some of our favourite Wingnuttians. My immediate reaction to the news yesterday was "Oh shit!?" and a quick hand stifling laughter. But after a few minutes the gravity of the situation, and its far-reaching implications, started sinking in. That feeling didn't improve as I read the Statement of Claim.

It's sometimes easy to forget that the laws of meat space also apply to The Internets. Although it might get a little crazier here on the Toobz, the rules of engagement are generally the same -- you can't say that someone did some nasty lowdown thing that they didn't do. Posting to a blog is like publishing a column in a newspaper -- if an editor writes a column that makes wild and unfounded accusations about someone, he can expect the law's great shit-hammer to come down on his head in due course.

There's nothing weird about Warman's lawsuit except the fact that the defendants didn't see it coming. (NOTE: According to the SoC, the defendants were advised this was coming a couple of months back, so they weren't completely gobsmacked.) Most of them have been poking at this litigious hornet's nest for months, so no surprise that it didn't end well for them, and for most of them, no sympathy from me. However, when I read the Statement of Claim I found the suit against SDA disturbing. Kate McMillan is being sued for things she didn't say or post herself: a post by a guest poster and remarks made by commenters.

Once again, I surprise myself: I really hope Kate wins this fight, so much so that I might even throw a few bucks into her defense fund (EDIT: Nah, I don't think so.*) It's bad enough that libel suits are flying around at all, but worse still for someone to be sued for things she didn't even say. Forget for a moment about the negative side of SDA (is there another?) and even whether there was tacit approval of the libelous statements on Kate's part -- she didn't make them herself, and that is all that matters. If she loses, it won't be good for anyone.

UPDATE: Okay, thanks to the education provided by my hard-working commenters, I'm becoming less convinced about what I blurted out in the last paragraph above. (I haven't lapsed into total ambivalence yet, though.)

*However, another issue that came up (thanks, BCL) is that Mark Francis of Section 15 is still fighting his libel suit, which also came about because of a link, and it's the precedent-setter, not SDA's case. I have to admit I was only vaguely aware of Mark's suit, and for some reason thought that it was finished, but it's not. If anyone is so inclined, that's where I'd "throw a few bucks".

On unringing bells

Somebody's quickly finding out that "free speech" doesn't mean the freedom to spew potentially-libelous bullshit.

Last summer I took the unusual (at least among my progressive peers) stance of defending FD when they got a complaint from the CHRC. I still believe that the last thing any of us should want to see is websites being shut down for being "offensive" -- "offensive" being a pretty subjective term -- and that's where this kind of thing goes. But I was a little shocked at the level of idiocy FD and its constituency displayed in response to the complaint. 90-page threads hurling insults and making veiled threats at the complainant are usually a bad idea -- there's freedom of speech and there's freedom of stupidity.

When the complaint was dropped, FD and friends were therefore so emboldened that when someone more tenacious came along, they saw no reason to respond any differently. Stupidity then escalated from the merely offensive to what might turn out to be outright libel. Yay team. Thick as they are, today it seems to be finally dawning on them just what they've wrought. Threads are disappearing, flustered and justifiably fearful apologies are being made, but...

... you can't unring a bell -- can you say "google cache"? "screenshots"? This one's done like dinner. And knowing how litigious this Richard Warman guy is even when he's merely "offended", I shudder to think of his response at being (possibly) libeled.

I wonder if it's starting to occur to these "free speech defenders" how much damage they actually do to the cause of free expression... Naahhh. What was I thinking to even consider such a thing!?

Smoking and the painful stupid of the conservative mind

(Or maybe this is a good time to employ their beloved scare quotes: make that the conservative "mind".)

Over at that bastion of bigotry and brain damage known as FD, a poster bitching about lawsuits stemming from mistreatment of natives ponders: "Should White People sue the Indians for Tobacco Cancers?"

Right, that makes sense. If you're an idiot.

When natives offered our marauding European ancestors a hit off the old peace pipe and a free sample to take back home, I doubt if their shamans had amassed all the medical evidence that tobacco smoke was harmful. And though the natural tobacco the natives smoked would have contained tar, it didn't contain the odious chemicals that drive someone to light up 20 times a day. It was only when profit-mongering Europeans figured out how to make this pleasant ritual addictive by adding nicotine, and more accessible by rolling it in paper, and smoother-tasting and more evenly-burning by adding to it a toxic soup of chemical shit, that tobacco became really deadly.

It would be redundant to point out that in the process of teaching white people how to smoke, natives didn't take over their homes, force them to give up their language and traditions, torture them in residential schools, systematically slaughter them by introducing diseases to which they had no immunity, etc etc and so on and so on. But just based on the tobacco issue alone, if anything, natives who get tobacco-related cancers should be the ones suing white people for fucking up their relatively harmless tobacco-smoking tradition and turning it into a virulent addiction.

Put that in your pipe...

Last word on FD (then I go back into ridicule mode)

I'm losing hope (and empathy). I've never seen anyone go so completely opposite to the way they should be going than FD and how they're dealing with their CHRC difficulties.

They're planning a rally... fine, good for them. I like to see people out protesting, whether I agree with the issue or not. It's one of our rights, no, obligations as participants in a democratic society, to get out there and protest the shit we don't like. So they're planning a rally for the site owners... great... "and Bill"!??. Oh, that's a fine idea, give that fruitcake the stage so he can blather and foam away, maybe hand out some flyers with 4-colour pictures of anal warts and prolapsed rectums (recta?)... that's the face they want to show the media and the rest of Canada? I had a hard time maintaining sympathy for their plight when I found out they'd published the complainant's personal information, but a "rally for Bill" is a deal-breaker.

And now...
...they're collecting "incriminating evidence" from lefty sites and blogs. Yeah, they've been here (I know who's who on the sitemeter), although I wouldn't think they'd have to look far to find something that offends their tender sensibilities. It is, after all, "What I Do" (she said proudly). Predictably, someone is even threatening to file complaints with the CHRC. Good way to fight for Free Speech, guys -- gather up all the stuff that you think should be censored and make your own complaints.

I give the fuck up, seriously.

When you're hot you're hot

When you're not you're not. I. Hate. Being. Wrong... but when I am, I'll admit it.

Free Dominion's Hate Speech Complaint: The offending thread that got FD in some hot HRC water this week has been revealed, and it wasn't, as I was thinking, just a typically ignorant comment that some Sensitivista over-reacted to, it was a doozy.

Not surprisingly it came from a guy named Bill Whatcott, by far the most outrageous poster on the site, a rabid bigot who routinely posts jaw-droppingly ignorant screeds against gays and Muslims; in this case the offending thread linked to this post against Muslims. Even by my forgiving standards, the post in question would qualify as hate speech, so I shudder to think how the HRC views it. It would definitely incite hatred of Muslims in those already so predisposed, some of whom might be found browsing forums like FD. Racist garbage of the highest order. In addition, the complainant went through the forums and found more anti-Muslim posts by Whatcott, clear evidence that this wasn't a one-off situation, but ongoing hate speech by the legal definition.

I still question the wisdom of going directly to the HRC with this, but that's probably just because my kneejerk response to everything is always, as they say in Mexico, "No policia! No policia!". However, there's a line between free speech and the abuse of free speech, and Mr. Whatcott's post clearly crosses it. I hope he intends to pay the fine.