In final submissions this morning at the hate speech hearing of Marc Lemire, operator of the far-right freedomsite.org and a prominent figure in Canada's "white rights" movement, CHRC lawyer Margot Blight said there is no "free pass" for the website owners.
"If a message board owner can't manage to ensure the content of the message board is complying with Canadian law, then the message board should not be operating," she said.
This should cause the blogosphere some major concern. There are yahoos everywhere who post crazy stuff in the comments section.
You could have a politically motivated person post "hate speech" on an older post while the blog owner isn't looking, and thereby set him up for a hate speech complaint.
All bloggers should be concerned about this. You have to know ahead of time what's hate speech is, but since it's such a broad and nebulous term, you don't know ahead of time what is acceptable and what's not. For instance, according to fourhorses' liveblogging on Free Dominion, the CHRC lawyer said that it would be unacceptable to attribute the origins of AIDS to homosexuals-- it's promoting "cruel stereotypes".
Well, I did not know that. I, and probably most people, would think that if the AIDS epidemic first came to the fore in the gay community, then you should be able to say so.
But now, apparently, that's hate speech. Even if it is true, "truth is not a defense". If you use the truth to "villify" people, that goes against section 13.1.
And if you, a Canadian, cannot know what is legal or not, how can you expect your foreign visitors to know?
And to further highlight the Orwellian nature of the CHRC's interpretation of hate: according to fourhorses' liveblogging, the CHRC believes that antisemitism in books on library shelves is okay-- so Shakespeare gets a pass because it doesn't "cause antisemitism"-- but online comments are okay.
So let's get this straight. Books that have antisemitic comments and that are read by millions of people do not "cause antisemitism" and are therefore okay.
Message boards read by a few dozen people do cause antisemitism, and must be suppressed.
That's just stupid.
If you're a blogger, regardless of your political persuasions-- be afraid. Be very, very afraid.
