Facebook Comments Lead to Criminal Charges in Alberta
3 Comments
Recent Posts
Why Being Locked Out of Frontier AI is The Sovereignty Threat Canada Missed 
Blocked Twice: How Bill C-34’s Kids’ Social Media Ban Would Compound the Online News Act’s Harm to Young Canadians’ News Access 
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 275: David Loukidelis on Why Stripping Privacy Enforcement from Canada’s Privacy Commissioner in Bill C-36 is Unnecessarily Risky Policy 
The Data on Australia’s Social Media Ban: The Better the Privacy Protection, The Less Effective the Ban 
Shaky Ground Gets Shakier: What the U.S. Supreme Court’s Location Data Decision Means for Bill C-22
Still don’t get it
I’ve yet to hear a satisfactory explanation for why criminal libel is still an offence in Canada.
My guess – he criticized a cop.
Unnecessary, but tough point to argue
Like copyright law, libel/slander laws are actually unnecessary in that they resolve a problem which would likely resolve itself. In a world without libel/slander laws you’d have, by necessity, a society more critical of what they hear and one’s word would have it’s own reputation. The words of pathological badmouthers would eventually carry little or no creedence.
That being said libel/slander laws just need more check for abuse as even the threat of a trial, whether with merit or not, may silence someone who is speaking truthfully about wrongoing and such. These laws in their current form threaten open, honest, discourse and one’s right to warn their fellow citizens about scam artists and frauds.
Funny, you insult the wrong person, you could go to jail….
Yet have half a town libel in newsprint an innocent man as a murderer and the cops call it “gossip” and wipe their hands of it.