Video report of Chris Hand’s case by the CBC
Chris Hand Zeke, owner of Montreal art gallery Zeke’s Gallery and the blog of the same name, was featured on CBC yesterday. The reporter used his current case to highlight the gray area bloggers operate in currently in Canada.
If you missed the story, Chris blogged about another Montreal art gallery owner and linked to the National Post, Le Devoir and Radio-Canada articles which covered the owner’s troubled past, who subsquently sued Chris for libel, demanding 60.000$ in compensation, and more.
In other related news, Chris Hand Zeke is closing the art gallery.
In this case, a man took a website down because the blogger linked to a newspaper article. If you are blogging, if you operate a website where users can publish at (“user-generated-content”), if you plan to have “social networking” features in a new website, then it’s a critical problem for you. I am always surprised at how so many Canadian bloggers get on the internet neutrality bandwagon, whereas it is a pure U.S. problem, a fight between American Congress, American Telecom companies, and Internet giants the like of Google and Yahoo, whereas this issue is more critical and more relevant.
Think about it. What do you have the right to blog about? Do you think you are protected by provincial and federal law if you publish your opinion about someone else? Aren’t you liable in Canada if one of your user is making a bad reputation of another person in your website?
