Free Dominion Website Shut Down by Lawfare, So Much For Canadian Freedom of Speech

By Dean Weingarten

Communist Canada
Free Dominion Shut Down by Lawfare
Dean Weingarten
Dean Weingarten

Arizona – -(Ammoland.com)- Free Dominion, one of the adamant foes of the Canadian Gun Registry, has been shut down.

The conservative website, Free Dominion, has shut down after a long legal battle with censorship champion lawyer Richard Warman.  Warman gained notoriety for his attacks on sites he disagreed with by using the “hate speech” law in Canada (the Canadian Human Rights Commission) to censor speech.

He was essentially the only person using the law and the process.  The CHRC became his personal tool of repression.  He had considerable success, though the CHRC has since been reformed by parliament as a result.

Free Dominion has had a warm spot in my heart for  12 years.   They were one of the first sites to post my essay, Gun Registration is Gun Confiscation, and it lead to a spirited discussion on the site that I referenced more than once.  When I wanted to find the essay on the Internet, a search always turned up Free Dominion.  Not any more.

According to Mark Steyn, who was attacked by Warman, Warman’s  modus operandi was to create multiple Internet personalities, and use those to promote personal “hate speech” on websites.   He then referenced the posts in his lawsuits, and obtained quite a fortune from the process.   Now that the CHRC has been reformed, Warman has resorted to another part of Canadian law.

Warman is now using the law on defamation to shut down Free Dominion.  The Canadian law is so antithetical to free speech that it becomes impossible to meet the standards of the court and operate a web forum at the same time.  From Free Dominion:

Today, Ontario Superior Court Justice Robert Smith issued an order in the Richard Warman vs Mark and Connie Fournier and John Does defamation case heard September, 2013. In addition to ordering that we must pay Warman $127,000, Justice Smith issued an injunction against us ordering we that never publish, or allow to be published, anything negative about Richard Warman. This means we are barred for life from ever operating a public forum or a blog (even about cookie recipes) where the public can comment. If we do so, any one of Warman’s handful of supporters could, and probably would, use a common proxy server to avoid being traced, plant a negative comment about Warman on our site, and we would both be charged with contempt of court. If that happened –unlike in the Ottawa courtroom where we were blocked at every turn from presenting a defense– we actually would have no defense. We would both go to jail. This life sentence was imposed for our terrible crimes of voicing our honestly held beliefs and allowing others to do the same. Defamation law, in its current state, is entirely inadequate and counterproductive when applied to the internet. Now it is being used as a tool of censorship. Effectively!

While this is more of a free speech issue than a second amendment one, the two are closely intertwined.   The Canadian press is itself cowed by the ruling.   Only one article has appeared about it in Canada, and the comments section was turned off.   But then, perhaps the old print media likes the idea of Internet political forums being shut down.   The ruling makes it impossible to allow a free interchange of ideas on the Internet, without fear of a successful lawsuit, in Canada.

Canadian law does not have an exception for public figures, as does American law.  Truth is only a defense if you can absolutely prove that what you write is true.  There is no room for opinion.  The lawtimesnews.com has a pretty good overview of the case.   The article sums up Warman’s claims here:

Freedominion.ca has been critical of Warman’s efforts and published dozens of comments that called him, among other things, a “censorship champion.”

So, in Canada defamation law, saying that someone is a censorship champion can result in their ability to effectively censor you.

c2014 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included. Link to Gun Watch

Free Dominion
Free Dominion

 

About Dean Weingarten;

Dean Weingarten has been a peace officer, a military officer, was on the University of Wisconsin Pistol Team for four years, and was first certified to teach firearms safety in 1973. He taught the Arizona concealed carry course for fifteen years until the goal of constitutional carry was attained. He has degrees in meteorology and mining engineering, and recently retired from the Department of Defense after a 30 year career in Army Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation.

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A Canadian

Hey Buck’eroo take a pill, the article is about what is happening to Canadians, decent hard working Canadians including the principled conservative Canadians at the Free Dominion website.

You hate Canadians eh? Should we hate Americans because they put that communist in the White House, get a grip. We are in this fight together but don’t expect me to stand next to a guy who hates my fellow countrymen because of what a few did.

edward

The battle is lefturd facists vs freedom and justice. That never changes, only the names of bad guys change in the mix. Make no mistake, this is politically correct facism on one side represented by hoplophobes, Christaphobes, heterophobes, babyaphobes, truthaphobes and pos masquerading as humans. You can see attacks on property rights have been followed by attacks on freedom of expression. The enemies of one are the enemies of the other, a classic case of good vs evil. Canuckistan is a bastion of system imposed bigotry(bilingualism, affirmative action)which is illegal except against Englsih speaking Caucasian straight people. The evidence is… Read more »

Buck

YEAH , I am beginning to hate Canadians because they have become gutless wonders just like the rest of the communist New World Order . One student punished for racism because he pictured a real communist b–t–d kicking in a door , as i communist b–t–ds are not also fascist b–t–ds Oh , right , he was black ( Osama Barack Obamass ) but there is NOTHING that says communist b–t–ds don’t come in all colors and nationalities like blacks and Canadians .