Court unmasks anonymous media site posters

NEWS – In what may be the first case of its kind involving comments posted to a Canadian media website, the Halifax weekly The Coast has been ordered to identify seven people who made allegedly defamatory statements tagged to a story about racism in the city’s fire department. As well, Google was ordered to identify the holder of a gmail account who circulated an email that could be defamatory. “The court doesn’t condone the conduct of anonymous Internet users,” a Nova Scotia Supreme Court judge ruled April 14. The Coast and Google did not oppose the motion to produce the information. Read the reports in The Globe and Mail and Halifax’s Chroncile Herald.