Richard Warman's attempt to block U.S. websites
By Ezra Levant on March 4, 2008 8:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (38) | Trackback
I've written about how Richard Warman, the former Canadian Human Rights Commission staffer who is now the CHRC's biggest customer for thought crime complaints, has tried to censor Canadian libraries in British Columbia and Ontario.
But the largest libraries in the world now, of course, are online. And defamation suits and human rights complaints -- Warman's preferred tools of censorship -- don't work as well if the libraries and other websites in question are based in the United States. Their robust First Amendment means that U.S. defamation law is not an effective censorship tool, and that country does not -- yet, at least -- have anything as pernicious as Canada's various thought crimes laws.
Well, if a Canadian can't censor U.S. websites, can he get Internet companies here in Canada to block those U.S. sites from Canadian Internet users, like Communist China does with politically incorrect sites? That's exactly what Warman sought to do in an application to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission.
I'm not an expert in telecommunications law, but from what I gather, Canada's big Internet companies like Rogers and Bell are governed by the Telecommunications Act (apparently little ISP's aren't). Section 36 of that Act specifically bans communication companies from interfering with content without government approval -- and that includes censoring websites:
Except where the Commission approves otherwise, a Canadian carrier shall not control the content or influence the meaning or purpose of telecommunications carried by it for the public.
Well, that's what Warman -- and the censors at the Canadian Jewish Congress -- asked the Commission to do. In the written application to the CRTC filed by his lawyers, Warman asks not only for the CRTC's "permission" under section 36 to ban two particular U.S. websites, but he also asks for:
Directions on procedure... whereby Canadian carriers and other interested parties can present their views as to whether the blocking of these URLs should be made a final order of the Commission and whether the blocking of these websites should be mandatory for all Canadian ISPs.
Warman didn't just want to crack open the law forbidding the big telecom companies from tampering or censoring content. He also wanted the CRTC to set up a procedure where "interested parties" like him could get the big carriers to block websites -- and force the little ISPs to do so, too.
There are so many appalling aspects to this application, it's hard to know where to start. The first is that Warman made his application ex parte -- that means without notice to anyone else with skin in the game. The owner of the two U.S. websites being being discussed wasn't there to make his case; no Canadian Internet companies were there, neither big nor small; no one else with a stake in communications was invited at all. Of course, ordinary Canadians who surf the Internet weren't invited, either, to say whether or not they wanted Warman and the CJC to decide for them where they could or could not surf. It was almost as cosy as a former CHRC employee filing a complaint with his former colleagues at the CHRC.
The second worrisome thing is that Warman and the CJC sought to criminalize websites without the trouble of a criminal trial. Here's the affidavit filed by the CJC's Bernie Farber; in paragraph 5 he says that in his "expert" opinion, the U.S. websites in question likely violate sections of Canada's Criminal Code. But Farber is not a policeman or a prosecutor; he doesn't work as an officer of the law, he works as an officer of a special interest lobby group. And even if he was a policeman, a policeman's view is just one side of the story. Here in Canada we don't convict someone of a crime ex parte; we invite the accused to hear the case against him; we allow the accused to present a defence; and we ask well-trained criminal judges to make those weighty decisions, not CRTC bureaucrats whose expertise is telephone red tape.
Very few Canadians knew about this outrageous application -- an attempt to turn the CRTC itself into a replica of the CHRC, but even more unfair. At least the CHRC invites respondents to make their case. (The respondents never win; the CHRC has a 100% conviction rate for section 13 idea crimes. But at least they pretend.) There would be no pretending at the CRTC, because any website, anywhere around the world, would be summarily tried, here in Canada. In almost every conceivable case, it would be a thin-skinned Canadian complainer's word against someone in a foreign country who would be absent. Just imagine the abuses that would happen in such a system. Canada would truly become like China, a gross violator of "netiquette", a censor en masse, treating our citizens like sheep.
To their everlasting credit, the CRTC threw out the application, for several of the very reasons I've outlined above:
...given the unprecedented nature of the relief sought in the Application and the serious and fundamental issues it raises, as well as the fact that the specific approval is being sought in favour of Canadian carriers without notice to such carriers, it would be inappropriate to consider granting the interim relief sought in the Application on an ex parte basis, and in particular without affording Canadian carriers and all other interested parties the opportunity to comment. Such a public process would allow for consideration of the broader policy and legal issues regarding the scope, and appropriate use, of the Commission's powers pursuant to section 36 of the Act.
I'm interested in this subject because I'm interested in freedom, and I am only recently discovering the relentless nature of those who would erode or limit our freedoms here in Canada, especially in the name of phoney "human rights", such as the human right not to be offended.
But I'm also interested in this subject because, a week or so ago, Richard Warman, the applicant in this censorship gambit and the plaintiff in the library-censoring defamation suits, filed notice of a threatened defamation suit against me, too. And one of the recurring complaints in that notice was that I defamed him by calling him a censor.
I know, it's absurd. But then so much of this story is absurd.
If you want to help me fight Warman's threatened defamation lawsuit -- or help me in my other legal battle, the Alberta Human Rights Commission's two-year prosecution of me for publishing the Danish cartoons of Mohammed -- I'd be grateful. I promise to keep fighting until the fight is won.
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http://ezralevant.com/2008/03/richar...pt-to-blo.html