Wayne Crookes, a former campaign manager of the Green Party of Canada, is suing Google, Wikipedia and openpolitics.ca for libel. He is suing the sites for posting made by anonymous users on Google’s Blogspot, for an entry under his name on Wikipedia, and on openpolitics.ca, a political forum run by Michael Pilling a Green Party activist.
Canadian Sues The Messenger
“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.”
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.
Mr.Pilling said he plans to defend himself in the case and understands why Mr.Crookes is taking legal action. “It is a case that could potentially go all the way to the Supreme Court because there is very little on the books in Canadian case law with respect to libel and Internet defamation,” he said.
He went on to point out that as operator of the siteopenpolitics.ca, that he is being held responsible for edits that were made by others who were either registered users or anonymous users.
He added that even though the pages were removed that he is still being held liable.
Dermod Travis, a spokesman for Mr. Crookes, said the defendants did not respond appropriately when they were told they had crossed a line.
While libel is a serious matter taking this kind of legal action will raise plenty of eyebrows and invite more public scrutiny of Mr.Crookes character and reputation.
