The Big Chill

Free speech meets legal screech...

University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist says Canadian bloggers need to be aware that by effectively becoming publishers, they are subject to the laws on defamation and libel.

Those laws "apply online as well as off-line," he says. "Just because bloggers have the ability to write whatever they want doesn't give them licence to defame anyone."

Warren Kinsella, a prominent blogger and newspaper columnist, sued another blogger for libel last year, but settled the case after the blogger apologized for his remarks and paid Kinsella's legal costs.