Archive for March 25th, 2009

Ontario Court Orders Website To Disclose Identity of Anonymous Posters

An Ontario court has ordered the owners of the FreeDominion.ca to disclose all personal information on eight anonymous posters to the chat site.  The required information includes email and IP addresses.  The case arises from a lawsuit launched by Richard Warman, the anti-hate fighter, against the site and the posters.  The court focused heavily on the Ontario Rules of Civil Procedure, which contain a strong duty of disclosure on litigants. 

The discussion includes a review of many key Internet privacy cases, including the CRIA file sharing litigation (which the court distinguishes on the basis of different court rules) and the Irwin Toy case (which emphasized the importance of protecting anonymity, but which the court tries to distinguish on the basis of the newness of the issue at the time).  The court also looks at the string of recent cases involving child pornography cases and ISP disclosure of customer information, concluding that "the court's most recent pronouncement on this is that there is no reasonable expectation of privacy."

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March 25, 2009 58 comments News