
This story might seem like nothing, but it has the potential of creating a
case law that could litterally cut the grass from under the feet of many bloggers.
In Montreal,
Zeke’s Gallery is a place where unkown and experimental artists can show their art. Chris Hand, Zeke’s owner also writes a
blog about arts to promote his gallery. He also comments on issues pertaining to artists, among which are selling of paintings, and of course, frauds.
November 25 2006, Chris wrote an article and linked to a couple of stories published from reliable sources (National Post, CBC, Radio-Canada, etc.) about a Montreal car dealer who
“had previous dealings with the Montreal Mafia and boasted a mild criminal past”, mentionning he was implicated in a mob probe by multiple law enforcement agencies. He then went on to report that the said car dealer was now doing business with a “fellow” gallery owner who tried to sell some fake paintings to Loto-Québec, with a link to this story as well.
After a while, things went bad. Apparently, the people mentionned on Zeke’s blog were not happy at all about these allegations and asked him to remove all these “false” stories about them. The thing is though that poor Zeke only used the information from what was linked from reliable mass media sources! Why didn’t these people sue the mass medias then?
After receiving a couple of cease and desist letters, he was asked to go to court where the judge
granted the plaintiff an injunction against him.
The judgement called for Zeke’s Gallery removal of offending material from his blog, though there is no mention that the source (National Post, CBC, Radio-Canada) has to comply with this injunction. Isn’t it odd?
Since I cannot afford a lawsuit, I will refrain myself from doing any name dropping, but here’s a link to an article from Hour.ca that has
all the names of those who cannot be named.
I guess bloggers from outside Quebec and Canada could do Zeke a favour in publishing
this information everywhere on the Web in protest, thus
de Facto rendering the judge’s injunction ineffective. But I would never call for bloggers to do that. Oh no.
There is a difference between reporting facts published by known and reliable sources, and
libel. Right?
Freedom!
brem
via Julie Bélanger
tags:
blogger, bloggers, rights, law, libel, diffamation, injunction, quebec, montreal, canada, zeke, zeke’s gallery