The Fourniers, Connie & Mark, Battling for the Rights of Bulletin Board Hosts
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In a brief series of questions, Burnet asked \u201cDr Dawg<\/i>\u201d to give some biographical information.\u00a0 \u201cDr Dawg<\/i>\u201d is 67 years old and lives in Ottawa.\u00a0 He attended several Universities in Canada and in Scotland and has a BA and Masters in Literature.\u00a0 For years \u201cDr Dawg<\/i>\u201d was employed by the Social Sciences and Research Council as a grant officer.\u00a0 While working at SSRC, \u201cDr Dawg<\/i>\u201d became interested in labour issues and was elected to a position with the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) where he was a vice-president until 2003.\u00a0 In 2003 \u201cDr Dawg<\/i>\u201d went into a consulting business called \u2018First Write\u201d.<\/span><\/div>\n
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\u201cDr Dawg\u201d<\/i> describes himself as \u201ca man of the left\u201d and in his youth was a member of the NDP Youth wing.\u00a0 After that, he \u201cgravitated towards the Communist Party and was a member until the Czechoslovakian invasion\u201d, when he left the party and rejoined the NDP.\u00a0 He is a card carrying member of the NDP, with the exception of a couple of years when he was upset with the party and \u201cripped up his NDP membership card\u201d. <\/span><\/div>\n
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The Blogosphere is made up of \u201cmillions of blogs \u2026 maybe hundreds of millions of postings\u201d.\u00a0 On his own blog called \u201cDawgs Blawg\u201d he receives \u201cup to one thousand unique visits a day\u201d.\u00a0 \u201cComments are not moderated on my blog and go directly up\u201d.\u00a0 \u201cI chose not to moderate my blog\u201d but on occasions has had to ban \u201cup to 30 people\u201d for postings he finds offensive.\u00a0 On his website \u201cI use Site Meter to track visitors.\u00a0 I can see new and returning visitors.\u00a0 I can see the IP Address\u201d.<\/span><\/div>\n
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\u201cIn 2005 I decided to set up a blog about left wing issues and perspectives\u201d. And as part of that he has \u201cthree co-bloggers on the site\u201d, though the number of co-bloggers has fluctuated over time.\u00a0 He named the site \u201cDawgs Blawg; because I like dogs and didn\u2019t want to take it that seriously.\u00a0 It is a cartoonish name\u201d.<\/span><\/div>\n
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\u201cI welcome comments from people with different and divergent opinions\u201d, which includes \u201cDr Dawgs<\/i>\u201d own lawyer \u2013 Peter Burnet who admitted to being a poster on the Dawg’s Blawg website. <\/span><\/div>\n
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\u201cI really enjoy the cut and thrust of debate\u201d says \u201cDr Dawg<\/i>\u201d, and over the years has been officially served twice with defamation for his blog.\u00a0 The first case apparently involved a mistaken name on an article he wrote. \u00a0\u201cDr Dawg<\/i>\u201d was served with a libel notice, and ended up removing the post and publishing a retraction.<\/span><\/div>\n
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The second defamation complaint came from Ezra Levant, who served a libel notice for comments made surrounding a law society complaint where it was claimed to have been upheld by the law society.\u00a0 \u201cDr Dawg<\/i>\u201d removed some of the comments and apologized to Levant.\u00a0 \u201cDr Dawg<\/i>\u201d claims that \u201cLevants lawyers then apparently wanted to remove other allegedly defamatory material which I did not comply with or remove\u201d.\u00a0 Levant did not follow up on the lawsuit after that point.<\/span><\/div>\n
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In regards to the website FreeDominion, \u201cDr Dawg<\/i>\u201d describes them as \u201cradically conservative and pretty extreme.\u00a0 Use of the \u2018N\u2019 word.\u00a0 Muslim bashing, homophobia and an unpleasant place\u201d.\u00a0 The website \u201cchampions the rights of white nationalists, holocaust deniers, neo-nazis, white supremacists, homophobes and supports the right to unrestrained hate in society\u201d.\u00a0 Over the years \u201cDr Dawg<\/i>\u201d posted \u201conce or twice on FreeDominion\u201d.<\/span><\/div>\n
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In terms of speech restrictions, \u201cDr Dawg<\/i>\u201d says that \u201cI strongly supported Section 13 and was sad to see it go\u201d.\u00a0 That is a reference to Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, Canada\u2019s internet censorship legislation, which was repealed by the government last year (See more on Section 13 @ <\/span>http:\/\/www.stopsection13.com<\/span><\/span><\/a>) <\/span><\/div>\n
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\u201cDr Dawg<\/i>\u201d talked about a posting entitled \u2018Freedom of Speech\u2019 which I think was a posting on the FreeDominion message board.\u00a0 In his testimony \u201cDr Dawg<\/i>\u201d made some sort of reference to a \u201ctechnical relationship\u201d between Connie Fournier and myself.\u00a0 I did not understand his testimony on this point or what was meant by \u201ctechnical relationship\u201d.\u00a0 I believe it has something to do with computers, and perhaps an affidavit from a computer expert which was introduced in my <\/span>Section 13 hearing<\/span><\/span><\/a> (Bernard Klatt).\u00a0\u00a0 Perhaps we\u2019ll know more on this point during the cross-examination tomorrow.<\/span><\/div>\n
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In reference to Connie Fournier, one of the owner\/admins of the FreeDominion website, \u201cDr Dawg<\/i>\u201d posted a few times that she was the \u201cFreeDominatrix\u201d.\u00a0 He was sorry and \u201csometimes I can\u2019t help myself being uncivil to the uncivilized\u201d and was \u201cmocking her for a hyper-aggressive posture\u201d.\u00a0 \u201cThere is a hostility between the Fourniers and myself\u201d.<\/span><\/div>\n
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Traitor = Not Defamatory.\u00a0 Vocal Supporter of Taliban = Defamation<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n
\u201cDr Dawgs<\/i>\u201d testimony then centered on why he did not sue Roger Smith for calling him a traitor on Dawgs Blawg, <\/span>but did sue over the Taliban comments<\/span><\/span><\/a>.\u00a0 This gets a bit convoluted for me, since \u201cDr Dawg<\/i>\u201d was going very fast, and I just managed to write down smaller points of what he said.\u00a0 But basically the \u201ctraitor\u201d comment written by \u201cPeter O\u2019Donnell<\/i>\u201d was \u201cincoherent\u201d and that \u201cthe comment self-destructs\u201d due to its context.<\/span><\/div>\n
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The statement about \u201cDr Dawg<\/i>\u201d being a more vocal supporter of the Taliban \u201cwas a long and rambling post about a different topic\u201d and when the post mentions \u201cDr Dawg<\/i>\u201d, \u201cthere was no context to the statement\u201d which made it defamatory.\u00a0 \u201cDr Dawg<\/i>\u201d took the comments on the Taliban to be similar to calling him \u201can enemy agent\u201d.<\/span><\/div>\n
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From there \u201cDr Dawg<\/i>\u201d moved on and discussed some posting he had made on the Internet where he was critical of the Taliban and called them \u201can odious bunch of people\u201d that are a \u201cmurderous band of thugs\u201d and their \u201ccult of religious insanity\u201d.\u00a0 While \u201cDr Dawg<\/i>\u201d had been critical of the Taliban, he was opposed to Canada\u2019s intervention in the war in Afghanistan for a variety of reasons which included that the Taliban was originally supported by the US government in their war against the Soviets.\u00a0 \u201cI don\u2019t support another foreign intervention, when multiple foreign interventions are what originally caused the problems in the region\u201d.<\/span><\/div>\n
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After that \u201cDr Dawg<\/i>\u201d moved on to some other commentary, where apparently a prominent member of Canada\u2019s B\u2019nai Brith (Harry Abrams) referred to him as being Anti-Semitic for his comments on the State of Israel. \u201cDr Dawg<\/i>\u201d stated that he is \u201cquite critical of Israeli treatment of Palestinians and Bedouin\u2019s\u201d and in terms of \u201cIsraeli Apartheid\u201d he says that \u201cit is unfair to label Israel as an Apartheid state, but there are some apartheid like elements in the Israel\u2019s treatment of Palestinians and Bedouins\u201d.<\/span><\/div>\n
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The day came to a close with a series of questions by Burnet on the context of the Blogosphere.\u00a0 \u201cDr Dawg<\/i>\u201d testified that \u201ccontext is important\u201d and that \u201cthe political blogosphere could be characterized as <\/span>polemical<\/span><\/span><\/a>\u201d.\u00a0 But \u201cwe should not allow plain falsehood.\u00a0 And the internet does not make it ok to lie online\u201d.<\/span><\/div>\n
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Stay tuned for the cross-examination tomorrow of \u201cDr Dawg<\/i>\u201d.<\/span><\/div>\n
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: <\/span>http:\/\/blog.freedomsite.org\/<\/span>20<\/span>14\/03\/day-2-of-baglow-v-smith-fourniers.html<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Day 2 of the Baglow v. Smith & Fourniers Defamation Hearing Baglow testifies and hearing delayed due to medical problems \u00a0 March 25, 2014 OTTAWA:\u00a0 Today is the second day of the pseudonymous defamation trial of \u201cDr Dawg\u201d vs \u201cPeter … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[174,247,9,173,253],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=652"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":655,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652\/revisions\/655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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