From: mech@eff.org (Stanton McCandlish) Newsgroups: alt.censorship,comp.org.eff.talk Subject: Can. Supreme Court Justice criticizes university Usenet censorship Date: 13 Dec 1994 17:22:47 -0600 Organization: UTexas Mail-to-News Gateway Lines: 100 Sender: nobody@cs.utexas.edu Approved: mech@eff.org Message-ID: <199412132322.SAA20132@eff.org> Reply-To: shallit@graceland.uwaterloo.ca [This is just an informational forward, and does not represent official EFF positions or statements in any way. NOTE: I'm not the original author of this so please look at the headers carefully if you mean to reply to him/her.] Forwarded message: Date: Tue, 13 Dec 94 08:16:40 -0500 From: Jeffrey Shallit To: efc-announce@insight.dcss.McMaster.CA Subject: EFC press release Reply-To: Jeffrey Shallit ELECTRONIC FRONTIER CANADA (EFC) --- PRESS RELEASE (For immediate release --- December 13, 1994) CANADIAN SUPREME COURT JUSTICE OFFERS CAUTIONS ON UNIVERSITY CENSORSHIP OF ELECTRONIC SPEECH In the past year, many Canadian universities have banned Usenet newsgroups such as "alt.tasteless" and "alt.sex.stories". Some University administrators claimed this censorship was justified, and even mandatory, because of alleged violations of the obscenity provisions of the Criminal Code. Now, a justice of Canada's highest court offers a word of caution. In a speech given on November 26 at the "Symposium on Free Speech and Privacy in the Information Age" held at the University of Waterloo, Mr. Justice John Sopinka stated, "Difficult issues also arise in the context of universities which take action to ban certain communications found to be offensive and undesirable. First, one must ask whether it is not preferable to permit the expression and allow the criminal or civil law to deal with the individual who publishes obscene, defamatory or hateful messages rather than prevent speech before it can be expressed. Otherwise, individuals may be putting themselves in the positions of courts to determine what is obscene and what is acceptable." Later, Mr. Justice Sopinka went on to raise the possibility that actions of universities may fall under Charter scrutiny when they resort to official censorship. In the 1990 case _McKinney v. University of Guelph_, the Supreme Court ruled that, in some cases, universities were not government entities and hence not subject to Charter scrutiny. But Mr. Justice Sopinka raised the possibility that this might not be the case for institutional censorship: "_McKinney_ left open the possibility that some form of activity by the University might constitute government action and thus, subject to the Charter. If governing bodies engage in acts of censorship, they run the risk of being classed as government action and subject to the control of the Charter. In this regard it is pertinent to observe that in the United States the First Amendment has been applied to State universities." Somewhat ironically, Mr. Justice Sopinka's own freedom of speech is limited when it comes to speaking about issues that may someday come before the Supreme Court. Nevertheless, members of Electronic Frontier Canada were encouraged by what they heard. David Jones, an EFC member, and a professor at McMaster University said, "We are glad to hear that such a prominent and respected judge acknowledges the seriousness of the issues raised by university censorship of electronic communications, such as computer bulletin boards." Jeffrey Shallit, professor of computer science at the University of Waterloo, agreed: "Mr. Justice Sopinka's analysis raises the possibility that official University censorship could result in legal liability under the Charter. Perhaps this will cause University administrators to think twice about official censorship in the future." The complete text of Mr. Justice Sopinka's remarks, raising many other interesting questions about law in the information age, can be accessed by gopher from the EFC archives using the command: gopher -p "1/community/efc/doc/sfsp" gopher.ee.mcgill.ca -- 30 -- For further information, or to arrange interviews: Prof. Jeffrey Shallit phone: (519) 888-4804 fax: (519) 885-1208 email: shallit@graceland.uwaterloo.ca Electronic Frontier Canada, online archives: Gopher: gopher://gopher.ee.mcgill.ca/11/community/efc World-Wide-Web: http://www.ee.mcgill.ca/efc/efc.html Anonymous FTP: ftp://insight.mcmaster.ca/pub/efc -- Stanton McCandlish
mech@eff.org

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