Posted on 03/13/2006 2:14:13 PM PST by Daytyn71
For the first time in Canada, an Internet service provider has been found guilty and fined for hosting websites that spread hate messages against blacks, Jews and Muslims.
In the landmark ruling by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal yesterday, southern Ontario's white supremacy movement also took a hit, with two leaders and one group found guilty of violating the Canadian Human Rights Act and ordered to pay $8,000 in fines and compensation.
The Internet service provider, Affordable Space. com, was fined $5,000.
"The ruling sends a very strong message that Internet servers, if they are aware there is hate content and don't take timely action to remove it, can be held liable," said Ottawa lawyer Richard Warman, who filed the complaint in February 2002.
The ruling was the third victory in as many tries for Warman in efforts to shut down Internet hate and a boost to his complaints against several other London-area white supremacists.
"I am absolutely thrilled," he said. "This is proof human rights laws work."
The ruling also shows that online pseudonyms, used by both men in the case, are no protection against the law, said Monette Maillet, the Canadian Human Rights Commission lawyer who argued the case before the tribunal.
"The ruling shows Canadians have no tolerance for hate," Maillet said.
In the ruling, ex-Londoner James Scott Richardson was fined $1,000 for several Internet postings, including one calling for attacks on Jewish and Muslim agencies, temples and residences.
Longtime white supremacy leader Alexan Kulbashian of North York was fined $1,000 for his hate messages.
Kulbashian must also pay $5,000 to Warman for online attacks against the lawyer.
Reached at his parents' home near Toronto, Kulbashian expressed anger at media coverage of the issue.
"My comment for you is shut up," said Kulbashian, before hanging up.
Richardson, now living in Hamilton, couldn't be reached for comment.
Richardson and Kulbashian were members of the Canadian Ethnic Cleansing Team (CECT), now defunct, which also must pay a fine of $3,000.
The CECT website and a related web forum were hosted on Affordable Space.com.
Kulbashian may be on the hook for the $3,000 fine against Affordable Space.com, because he owned the company.
The CECT web forum was "littered with statements of extreme ill will to various ethnic, racial and religious groups," ruled tribunal members Athanasios Hadjis,
Some of the material suggested whites use any means possible to ensure the "white race prevails."
"I find that the material in question constitutes hate messages," Hadjis said.
The Human Rights Act prohibits the communication of messages over the Internet likely to expose people to hatred or contempt based on religion or race.
The two men, the group and the server must "cease and desist" sending similar material over the Net, Hadjis ruled.
The ruling is backed by the federal court, which can fine or imprison the two men for contempt if they break the order, Warman said.
Warman and the commission had also sought penalties against a website called tricityskins.com.
Hadjis dismissed the complaint because the extent of Richardson and Kulbashian's involvement with the site or a group with the same name was never made clear.
At a February 2005 tribunal hearing in Oakville, Richardson threatened several times to walk out and he and Kulbashian accused London police and Maillet of lying.
The two men vowed earlier to fight the allegations, but decline to offer any evidence in their own defence at the hearing.
"compensation" ???
I wonder how they arrived at this number.
Maybe there were 8,000 offended visitors to this site during a given period.
That's a dollar a pop.
So, can somebody call up and order ten bucks worth of hate?
Another nail in the coffin of "free speech" from Canada.
How many anti-Christian "hate speech" web-sites have they shut down? 0? Oh, I see, to hate "Christians" is O.K., that's free speech.
Nothing like blocking free speech, kind of reminds me of communism.
Don't know how this could hold up. The web is world wide and what's tolerated in one corner may or may not be taboo in another. Then there's supposedly freedom of speech in America.
"The ruling sends a very strong message that Internet servers, if they are aware there is hate content and don't take timely action to remove it, can be held liable," said Ottawa lawyer Richard Warman, who filed the complaint in February 2002."
and just who defines what "hate" content is? if I buy product A, and buy it from store B, and I have a problem with it, store B won't fix it and treats me rudely and I complaint about it online..could the gov't then classify that as "hate" speech at the behest of store B??
It's a very slippery slope when gov't says "I don't know how to define hate speech, but I know it when I see it"...
Last time I checked you had to dial up an url to get to website. Simply don't visit the site if you don't agree with the views.
Sheesh I guess we could get DU shutdown and fined...(/sarcasm).
We're watching the death of FOS.
These guys are Nazi types but these charge are bllsht to me. When will a Muslim hate site hosted in Canada be gone after? One with postings in Arabic? I'm so glad I don't live in Canada. Britain can be even more loony left--->>>
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2088-2081330,00.html
Bin the rubbish bag police
Rod Liddle
Andrew Tierney of Hinckley, Leicestershire, has been fined £50 by his local council for having deposited two bits of junk mail in a litter bin. Hinckley and Bosworth borough council says litter bins aren’t for domestic stuff like letters, they’re for rubbish you find or generate in the street.
You may have read this story in one of your papers and sighed a little and perhaps wished ill-fortune on the petty, mean-minded, self-important bureaucrats who run our local councils, and particularly Hinckley and Bosworth borough council. Or you might have thought the story so absurd that the journalist made
Today I can reveal the other side to the story, the council’s side. And the great thing is that it makes the council look even more fatuous than it did last Thursday when Tierney contacted his local newspaper to complain about the fine.
The council now alleges that Tierney did not deposit just two letters in the litter bin, but a whole sack of “domestic rubbish”. Tierney denies the imputation: “They’re just trying to save face. They’ve been made to look stupid, so they come up with this. Why didn’t they say that on Thursday?”
Quite; but more to the point, how did they know that this black bag full of “domestic rubbish” had been deposited by Tierney — unless, that is, they pay someone to rifle through the garbage with the sole purpose of persecuting rubbish-placement transgressors? Well, of course, on cross-examination it transpires that this is exactly what they spend your council tax on. Rubbish placement transgressor inspectors.
------SNIP------
My question is (which is of course purely hypothetical) - if I advocate the killing of hate mongering white supremicists on my Website in Canada, would I be fined (and possibly jailed) and would the Nazis be entitled to compensation?
Just wait until they do this crap here in the USA...Michael Marcevage would be virtually banned from the internet. FreeRepublic would be banned as well. Hell, the entire usenet would be banned as well. Stuff like this is directly leading us to Internet2 where there will be NO free speech...hell, from the way I understand it, you would have to be approved by the government to even be able to USE Internet2.
Exactly. All they would have to do is buy space on a server in Thailand.
IMO the Liberals and NDPers who refuse not only to take up the tough fight for FOS, but then also work for the expansion of these so called "rights" commissions are paranoid, deluded and grandious.
The lefties just never get it until the commissars come for them.
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