Page "Strategic lawsuit against public participation" Paragraph 67

* Crookes v. Openpolitics. ca, filed May 2006 Supreme Court of BC, and a series of related suits leading to a unanimous October 2011 ruling by the Supreme Court of Canada in Crookes v. Newton upholding the rights of online debaters to link freely to third parties without fear of liability for contents at the other end of the link.

A number of related rulings had previously established that transient comments on the Internet could not be, in themselves, simply printed and used to prove that " publication " had occurred for purposes of libel and defamation law in Canada.

Other elements of the ruling clarified how responsible journalism ( and therefore the right to protect anonymous sources ), qualified privilege and innocent dissemination defenses applied to persons accused of online defamation.