Posted on 03/24/2009 7:01:42 AM PDT by Sir Gawain
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A judge has ordered Free Dominion, the Canadian counterpart to Free Republic, to release the records of its anonymous forum posters in order to enable a lawsuit by Richard Warman. The release will mean the end of anonymity for all practical purposes in Canada, as well as an end to privacy for Free Dominion itself, which must also produce all its hosting agreements and ownership information as well. The judge offered this ironic justification for his order:
[33] In the case before the court, we are dealing with an anti-hate speech advocate and Defendants whose website is so controversial that it is blocked to employees of the Ontario Public Service.
That’s the threshold for privacy in Canada? Anyone styling themselves as an “anti-hate speech advocate” can raid the records of a web community he doesn’t like? Note also the circular reasoning here employed by Judge Stanley Kersham. If the government sees fit to block a website from its employees at some level, then it’s permissible to strip them of their rights to privacy and speech at any point.
As far as the “anti-hate-speech” advocate himself, Kersham seems to have missed this finding by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal from just two weeks ago. Richard Warman was not just a customer of the CHRC, he was one of its big offenders as well:
I do not see any acceptable reason for Mr. Warman to have participated on the Stormfront or Vanguard sites, since there appears to be ample easily obtained messages on these sites available without his involvement. Moreover, it is possible that his activity in this regard, could have precipitated further hate messages in response. His explanation for including other hate messages in his postings by mistake seems very weak to me.
Mr. Warman has, with the assistance of the Commission, instituted most of the s. 13 (1) complaints under the Act that have come before the Tribunal. He has been very successful in these cases and has garnered accolades for his work in this regard. The evidence in this case of his participation on Internet sites similar to the Northern Alliance site is both disappointing and disturbing. It diminishes his credibility. For this reason and because the activities of the Respondents have ceased for a lengthy period of time, I will not make any further Orders in this matter.
In essence, Kersham just allowed a participant on neo-Nazi discussion forums to raid Free Dominion’s business records.
Free Dominion wants to fight this ruling but is just about out of funds. Read their entire post to find out how you can help, and keep up with the story at Five Feet of Fury as well. If you haven’t already done so, order your copy of Ezra Levant’s Shakedown, which has more on the Human Rights Commission, its tribunal, and Richard Warman.
To be succinct:
Rich, powerful people will be the only ones with "free speech".
Open your peasant yap - you'll have an expensive lawsuit shoved down it. Or the ones with the ultimate blank checkbook will come after you - the government.
People don't seem to understand that the Founders didn't have or envision a government with an unlimited budget for "rules enforcement".
We've inherited the traditional respect for government operations, but often fail to examine what's really going on.
Sometimes, government operatives don't do what's "right". That's when the blank checkbook becomes a problem.
Just post using TOR.
Takes just a few minutes to install the Vidalia package and the TOR button for the browser. Traffic is encrypted from your browser through many servers until the last hop...which for me right now is a PC in Europe.
I rarely use it except to browse democraticunderground
and to post images on tinypic.
My IP right now is 80.77.80.23
Whois lookup lists this for my IP
OrgName: RIPE Network Coordination Centre
OrgID: RIPE
Address: P.O. Box 10096
City: Amsterdam
StateProv:
PostalCode: 1001EB
Country: NL
ReferralServer: whois://whois.ripe.net:43
NetRange: 80.0.0.0 - 80.255.255.255
CIDR: 80.0.0.0/8
NetName: 80-RIPE
NetHandle: NET-80-0-0-0-1
Parent:
NetType: Allocated to RIPE NCC
NameServer: NS-PRI.RIPE.NET
NameServer: NS3.NIC.FR
NameServer: SUNIC.SUNET.SE
NameServer: NS-EXT.ISC.ORG
NameServer: SEC1.APNIC.NET
NameServer: SEC3.APNIC.NET
NameServer: TINNIE.ARIN.NET
Comment: These addresses have been further assigned to users in
Comment: the RIPE NCC region. Contact information can be found in
Comment: the RIPE database at http://www.ripe.net/whois
RegDate:
Updated: 2005-07-27
# ARIN WHOIS database, last updated 2009-03-24 19:10
# Enter ? for additional hints on searching ARIN’s WHOIS database.
% This is the RIPE Whois query server #1.
% The objects are in RPSL format.
%
% Rights restricted by copyright.
% See http://www.ripe.net/db/copyright.html
% Note: This output has been filtered.
% To receive output for a database update, use the “-B” flag.
% Information related to ‘80.77.80.0 - 80.77.80.255’
inetnum: 80.77.80.0 - 80.77.80.255
netname: UAONLINE-1
descr: ipipe network
country: GB
admin-c: MS9776-ripe
tech-c: VK1045-ripe
status: ASSIGNED PA
mnt-by: uaonline
mnt-domains: uaonline
source: RIPE # Filtered
person: Soldatov Maxim
address: Marylebone high street 78
address: W1U 5AP London
phone: +380 50 4985406
e-mail: makc@ipipe.net
org: ORG-RIBC1-RIPE
nic-hdl: MS9776-ripe
mnt-by: uaonline
source: RIPE # Filtered
person: Vladimir Klenov
address: London, United Kingdom
phone: +380 50 4985406
e-mail: maple@ipipe.net
nic-hdl: VK1045-ripe
mnt-by: uaonline
source: RIPE # Filtered
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