Last Monday, on January 30^th, the Federal Court issued a judgment in an application against the Globe24h.com website and its owner, Mr. Sebastian Radulescu. Mr. Radulescu’s activities have been discussed over the past couple of years in mainstream media as well as here on Slaw.

In June 2015, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner issued findings (Complaints against Globe24h.com, 2015 CanLII 33260 (PCC)) which we then commented. In his reasons (A.T. v. Globe24h.com, 2017 FC 114 (CanLII)), Judge Mosley confirms, among other findings, that Mr. Radulescu’s website has no journalistic purpose:

[70] In

Last June 5^th, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC) issued its findings (Complaints against Globe24h.com, 2015 CanLII 33260 (PCC), the “Findings”) in relation with the activities of a Romanian entrepreneur who illegally downloaded a large number of Canadian decisions in order to commercially exploit the desire of the individuals named in these decisions to maintain some degree of privacy. The story of Sebastian Radulescu, the operator of the Globe24h.com website, has been reported by news organizations such as the Financial Post, the CBC and the Globe and Mail. See our summary . . . [more]

Romania joined the European Union in 2007. Accordingly, its citizens can presumably benefit from the recent ruling of the Court of Justice of the EU compelling search engines to comply in certain circumstances with requests from individuals to “de-link” search results where their privacy interests are implicated. But what rights, if any, are possessed by a Canadian who carries out a vanity Google search of their name and discovers that a Romanian website has republished personal details from a Canadian court case that is on the internet, yet “practically obscure” through its unlinked presence on CanLII? This is . . . [more]

In the context of investigation of a complaint under PIPEDA^[1] the Privacy Commissioner of Canada sought a reference to determine several preliminary issues.^[2] The claimant claimed Google violated PIPEDA when certain links to news articles pertaining to him arose in a search using the Google search engine. Google had taken the position that PIPEDA did not apply to Google, either, firstly, since the search service was not a commercial activity within the meaning of Section 4(1)(a) of PIPEDA^[3], and, secondly, if PIPEDA did apply then Google was excused since it was carrying out a journalistic activity . . . [more]

It’s not business as usual in Canadian courts. The COVID-19 pandemic has upended court operations, just as it has upended every other aspect of daily life. One response to the need to ensure physical distancing has been to move in-person court hearings to virtual formats. Beyond the utility of virtual hearings as short term emergency measures, there is reason to believe that this moment may well mark the start of a shift toward increased use of virtual hearings in the longer term. In discussing the impact of COVID-19 on courts, the Chief Justice of the Ontario Superior Court has stated . . . [more]

On Friday, January 26, 2018, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC) released a draft of their position regarding online reputation and on how Canadians can better protect their online privacy and rights.

The draft report is the result of a 2016 consultation on online reputations. Through this consultation, the OPC was soliciting input from interested stakeholders about new and innovative ways to protect reputational privacy. Reputation and Privacy is one of the OPC’s four strategic privacy priorities. A summary of the 28 submissions received is posted online on the OPC website.

Summarizing the report

The draft . . . [more]

No, not the author’s reputation. The subject’s.

In early December, the Americans celebrated legal blogging with the ABA Journal Web 100, and on December 31^st, Canada did likewise with the 2017 Clawbies. In between, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPCC) posted a summary of submissions received in its ongoing study into the privacy issues surrounding Online Reputation. Legal blogging wasn’t explicitly mentioned, but it’s hard to see how the subject can be avoided.

The original consultation document notes that “dating sites, sites that re-post court and tribunal decisions, and, overwhelmingly, the so-called . . . [more]

Each Wednesday we tell you which three English-language cases and which French-language case have been the most viewed* on CanLII and we give you a small sense of what the cases are about.

For this last week:

1. A.T. v. Globe24h.com, 2017 FC 114

[70] In my view, the respondent’s claimed purpose “to make law accessible for free on the Internet” on Globe24h.com cannot be considered “journalistic”. In this instance, there is no need to republish the decisions to make them accessible as they are already available on Canadian websites for free. The respondent adds no value to the . . . [more]

On the heels of the European Court of Justice’s decision, discussed on Slaw here and here, to require Google to suppress links to particular web sites that had ‘irrelevant and outdated’ personal information about a complainant, and US courts’ refusal to do the same, the British Columbia Supreme Court has now gone a step further: it has ordered Google to ensure that searches for particular topics or a particular company do not find the company defendant in the action before it.

The principals of the defendant company were accused of stealing trade secrets of the plaintiff and of . . . [more]