Jon Newton has posted links to pictures, audio and video from the Freedom of Speech benefit concert August 5th.
As someone who spends quite a bit of time fighting to protect human rights, I agree with Jon Newton's lyrics that says, "Saying what you want to is the mother of all rights". Without the right to freely talk about what is happening in the world, without having lawsuits and other intervention discouraging legitimate speech, we cannot protect any other human rights. I wrote about this in my 2003 submission to the Canadian government on Copyright, and spoke about this at the events preceding the benefit concert.
The reverse-onus with defamation law that says that the accused is presumed guilty unless they can prove themselves innocent must be changed. While I don't believe people should be able to harm someone's reputation with impunity, I believe it is far more harmful to society to allow people to abuse these laws to stifle legitimate speech with impunity.
Reverse onus of defamation law
Isn't this there for a very important practical reason ?
Essentially, it says "if you say something about somebody, you need to be prepared to prove that what you said is true". That doesn't sound too unreasonable. If you were presumed innocent of defamation, how could you ever be found guilty ? If I (hypothetically) said publicly that "Russell illegally shared a music file", and I was presumed innocent, then to find me guilty you'd have to prove that you never illegally shared a music file, which sounds impossible to me (essentially, you'd be assumed guilty of what I'd claimed). On the other hand, it's not unreasonable to ask me to produce the evidence for my claim.
The real problem in this case is that it wasn't Jon who actually made the allegedly-defamatory statement, all he did was provide the means for somebody else to make it.
What needs "proof"?
There are multiple stages of any court case. It is hard to "prove" things, one way or the other, in most things.
The problem with the reverse onus is that it makes it extremely inexpensive for people to randomly launch lawsuits which turn out to have no merit. It should always be the person launching the lawsuit that has the burden of proof that there is a reason for them to launch the lawsuit. Going to court should always be seen as an extreme measure.
Defamation law also has different aspects of it. It isn't primarily about making false statements as we are allowed to do that -- making false statements is called being human. The issue is about making false statements that are harmful to someone's reputation. Saying publicly that "Russell illegally shared a music file" isn't going to harm my reputation. I can refute it or just ignore it, but if I really believed that this harmed my reputation the burden should be on me to prove that this harm is real.
Whether the statement was false or not isn't all that relevant, except as a defence against a defamation suit. The critical issue is whether what was said was harmful to the plaintiff's reputation. The plaintiff should have to prove that their reputation was being harmed, and that they aren't taking an issue to court that has no reason being there.
By the way, I have illegally shared music. Given how messy and complex the copyright act is, especially on music, I doubt there is a single Canadian citizen who can legitimately claim they haven't. Does this statement harm my reputation? Ignoring the fact it is made by me (and thus it is my own fault if it did), I doubt that being publicly honest is going to harm me. If only the hypocrites in the recording industry would be as honest.
Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) consultant.