Is posting on the internet the same as broadcasting? That is a question in front of the courts in a libel case.
The York University Excalibur has an interesting story about motions being heard in the case of professor David Noble claiming he was defamed by Canadian Jewish Congress Ontario Region, Hillel of Greater Toronto, the United Jewish Appeal of Greater Toronto, as well as the York University Foundation and various individuals, including outgoing York University president Lorna Marsden.
As tempting as it may be to comment on the merits of the case, I’ll focus on the motion to throw out the suit. The motion is based on the view that under Ontario’s Libel and Slander Act, the statute of limitations is only 6 weeks for cases involving broadcasting. Under normal circumstances, individuals have two years to commence a personal libel case.
The CRTC’s treatment of the internet is not as relevant as Ontario’s libel law definition of broadcasting.
“broadcasting” means the dissemination of writing, signs, signals, pictures and sounds of all kinds, intended to be received by the public either directly or through the medium of relay stations, by means of,
- any form of wireless radioelectric communication utilizing Hertzian waves, including radiotelegraph and radiotelephone, or
- cables, wires, fibre-optic linkages or laser beams
Sounds like the internet could fit under this definition, right?
Except for a 2003 Ontario Appeals Court ruling in Bahlieda vs Santa. That case points to Section 7 of the Libel Act that that the abbreviated statute of limitations “apply only to newspapers printed and published in Ontario and to broadcasts from a station in Ontario.”
There is also the open question of whether the existence of the content constitutes retransmission of the material. The issues in Bahlieda vs Santa, a case which was highlighted in Michael Geist’s 2003 A-Z year in review, aren’t going away.
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