City Council Forces Forum Offline; Claims Debate Should Take Place At Meetings Only
from the civilized-people-don't-do-online-forums dept
Eric Samson writes "The city council of the small town of Rawdon, Quebec (population: 9400) has managed to get a court order to shut down an online forum (French only) because its users were posting messages that were considered 'defamatory and detrimental to the reputation' of the elected board. Police raided the forum owner's house, copied his entire hard drive and asked him to delete the offending posts, and when he said he had over 8,000 messages to look through, they did not specify which ones were specifically targeted.So he simply shut down the site.
Five other users, posting under their real name, were visited by police as well. The city's lawyer declared: "What we can't do in newspapers, on the radio, or on TV, we can't do on the Internet. This is the message we're trying to get across." The mayor had this to say: "Debate should be civilized and take place during Council meetings.""
Democracy may be messy, but it seems rather pointless to completely shut off an avenue for discussion just because some parties are a little rude. If any individual was being defamatory, charge them with defamation -- don't shut down the whole thing. And, to then claim that debate should only take place at council meetings shows a council that isn't just out of touch with technology, but with democracy as well.
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Filed Under: local government, online forums, quebec
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hmm
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Google cache?
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Re: Google cache?
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Free Quebec
English Translation, courtesy of the Big G.
The forum was located at http://rawdon-qc.net/.
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Re:
"This is a well establish concept that 'public' meetings have to be 'public' and the internet forum is not 'public' in that it creates an element of 'anonymous'....and secondly, you would be surprised how many people dont have or use the internet, especially the less well off and handicapped."
That is a rather lame excuse for what the elected officals did. What's next ... you can not say anything bad about an elected offical - no matter whee you are.
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The internet is 'public'
The internet is public, and simply because it doesn't require or force someone to use their real name doesn't make it private. Here in America we like our freedom of speech, which treats the internet the same as showing up to a public forum. Guess that idea of freedom flies right over the head of you guys and gals up north.
Just because someone is handicapped or don't have the internet doesn't mean the forum is private. I don't pay for your local newspaper, so its a private forum? Please.
Funny though, that you would support the actions of the government in this action of restricting anonymous debate, then come on here and anonymously debate with us! Hah!
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Nice to know there's always going to be legalistic prigs to play off of. So...does this mean a group of friends at a coffee shop or bar can't discuss city business?? I mean, people who aren't their friends are 'excluded' from the discussion, right? What if they were at someone's house, discussing the council's actions? THAT isn't public, is it?
Blatant suppression of VALID free speech (including insulting the council members, their appearance, dress, wives and official actions), and you are going to defend it?
F'ing tard.
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Nice to know there's always going to be legalistic prigs to play off of. So...does this mean a group of friends at a coffee shop or bar can't discuss city business?? I mean, people who aren't their friends are 'excluded' from the discussion, right? What if they were at someone's house, discussing the council's actions? THAT isn't public, is it?
Blatant suppression of VALID free speech (including insulting the council members, their appearance, dress, wives and official actions), and you are going to defend it?
F'ing tard.
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Re:
Be fair - it was the wacky French Canadians, not your regular run-of-the-mill Canadians.
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get back on topic dork
Rawdon Weather - 5 hours 28 min ago
Rawdon M&M Weather 4PM 22°C Nice eh?
Oh I didn't go to the multi-munis festival going down at the beach because the last time I saw her in public she moved away as if I was gonna pop her maybe she has a fixation on guns it was at the last year's festival when she squeezed my ass. Rawdon is a small town with big ambitions a wannabe leader in the county, an experienced judicator and legislater and model to follow. So that's what the munis were thinking after DR had them convinced he could nail vicious community members to the wall with his SLAPP procedure. Well although it doesn't have much bearing in our case we're not the precedent ... oh are we okay so what are we fighting for? find out on the 16th of September when it all crashes down at the Joliette CourtHouse. 2nd floor. I'm so tired of this ridiculous tit for tat. We need male politicians with backbone and heart not a bitch with cougaring tendencies.
waiting on Bill 99 ...
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Correct me if I'm wrong...
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_Two_of_the_Canadian_Charter_of_Rights_and_Freedoms
"2. Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:
(a) freedom of conscience and religion;
(b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;
(c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and
(d) freedom of association."
Took me all of 30 seconds to find it, another 30 seconds to paste it. And somehow, I don't conclude that every time there's a murder in (insert country here) that they don't value life or don't have laws against murder.
This angry Canadian's going offline now to express some opinions regarding the ignorance of some of the above commenters.
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(a) freedom of conscience and religion;
(b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;
(c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and
(d) freedom of association."
Ask Ernst Zundel and his bouts with the Canadian Human Rights Commission about how free Canada is. Ask those travelers who want to enter Canada with "banned" books that are confiscated and burned how free Canada is.
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What if the forum were based in the USA?
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Well, yes and no...
Of course, taking down a web forum because you don’t like what te forum members have to say is just stupid, and as this Mayor is learning – counter productive.
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And i thought our second class brethren were
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Open meeting laws
No censorship here, though.
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Re: you will hopfully see through her veneer of a
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get back on topic who are you referring to
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Canada
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Cyber Intimidation? back to the topic
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Last time I attended a meeting, only two people on the town side did most of the talking: the mayoress and the director-general, acting as MC and main provider of content, which I find odd given this is supposed to be a meeting for citizens AND elected officials (I don't see why an unelected city official should take center stage). Other councillors were pretty silent, with most of their lines consisting of either "I propose" or "I second".
What people fail to grasp is that there is no culture of dialogue in these town meetings, with citizens often being talked down to and having little opportunity to voice their opinion (contrary to what happens when the meeting deals with minor zoning/construction derogations); the council doesn't want to have to go through the process of answering questions and incorporating comments from concerned/worried citizens. If the initiatives are so great, how difficult can they be to explain? :-) Things have gotten to the point where people can be considered out of order for ambiguous questions or comments and subjected to fines! (Isn't there a moderator/president at these assemblies?)
I have browsed the shutdown forum a few times and have also noticed the schoolyard antics of many participants, not untypical of many Internet forums. I would find it very surprising if the 'tough' talk found within it spilled over into the real world; these people were mostly playing knights and elves against evil spirits and the wicked witch of the West! The name-calling and references was mostly hyperbole; you don't like what they do, what they say, you don't have your way, so they're Nazis! That's what it boiled down to. But somehow some people could not accept the fact that somewhere out there, in cyberspace, some people were freely voicing their discontent.
All the talk was the equivalent of a pressure valve. If they had only put that energy to better use by creating a citizens' group or lining up some candidates at the last election...
Attempts were made in the past by Town people (including the director-general), family of elected officials, supporters, to voice their opinion, defend their side of the story, provide another point of view. They rapidly found their way to the sidelines, unable to cope with the medium and the sugar-rush behaviour of its more experienced participants.
Except for one, which didn't make the news and was the author of some of the most foul-mouthed, seemingly psychopathic postings, with many comments as offensive and personal as can be.
A city councillor.
A former city councillor to be precise.
But not one that had fallen out of favour.
Never said a bad word about the Town or its council.
Always had a response, a fact to provide to counter statements. Amazing was the insight of this very active forum member; having access to Town files and privileged information would not have made his answers more complete or robust.
Some people think he was a mole, an agent provocateur, helping to keep the trashy talk going. If that was the case, job well done!
Outside of these messages, we had a forum administrator, probably happy with all the activity on his website, not willing to shut down the life of the party. Most secretly enjoy flaming wars and hot topics and we all know how boring forums can get when you can't write anything that may get taken the wrong way by some sensitive soul out there. Cops shut down the party because of the loud music, taking away the records and the stereo, taking mugshots of the long-haired punks. Want to make another party or will you settle for a cup of tea and a scone?
The little treehouse where kids smoked cigarette butts and looked at the Playboy issue 'borrowed' from one of the boy's father collection has just been torn down with a city bulldozer because, well, because it was there and you just can't have kids doing kid stuff...
Now back to Ottawa.
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New Forum / Website
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The Worst City Council
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city council forces forum shut down
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================================================
peter
For Sale By Owner
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