The Supreme Court of Canada Combats Cyber-Bullying

In September of 2012, Canada’s top court, the Supreme Court of Canada, struck a blow to cyber-bullies in a case called AB v Bragg Communications Inc, 2012 SCC 46.

Background

The rise of social media platforms has had a drastic impact on the way people communicate. Facebook, the social media market leader, now has roughly 1 billion users. That’s right; almost 1 in 7 people around the world are on Facebook. When used properly, websites like Facebook can have a positive impact on a user’s life. However, these websites can also be a very dangerous tool.

Cyber-bullying (the use of the internet to degrade another person) is becoming increasingly common. Bullies can now hide behind the veil of the Internet to harm their victims in a way that was previously not possible without the help of technology. Social science evidence has shown that cyber-bullying is linked to significant psychological harm in underage victims. As a result of this harm, victims of cyber-bullying are at an increased risk of dropping out of school and, in extreme cases, committing suicide.

The evidence also indicates that these unfortunate outcomes can be avoided if victims are allowed to anonymously report cyber-bullying incidents.

The Supreme Court Decision

In the case of AB v Bragg Communications Inc., the Supreme Court of Canada decided that victims of cyber-bullying have the right to pursue their attackers without disclosing their identity. In other words, victims of cyber-bullying can take legal action against bullies without having to reveal who they are. This was a difficult decision for the Supreme Court to make because it had to balance the interests of the victim against the freedom of the press and society’s interest in having an open, transparent court process.

In AB v Bragg Communications Inc., a fake Facebook profile was set up containing hurtful commentary and sexualized images of a 15-year-old girl. With the help of her father, the girl commenced a defamation lawsuit against her attackers. Defamation actions are intended to protect the reputation of individuals from unwarranted attack. The girl also applied to the court for an order protecting her identity throughout the legal proceedings.

The Supreme Court found that society’s interest in finding out the identity of cyber-bullying victims is not very important, especially when compared to the extremely important desire to encourage victims of cyber-bullying to report their attackers. The court therefore decided to ban the publication of any information that would uncover the victim’s identity.

The Supreme Court’s decision is an important step toward combatting cyber-bullying. 

If you or someone you know is being bullied, tell someone you trust right away, even though this can be very difficult to do. You can also call Kids Help Phone at 1-800-668-6868 for more help in dealing with bullying.

Remember that legal action against bullies is an extreme step to take. Working together with school officials, parents and your peers to solve the problem is probably the best approach. Legal action should only be used as a last resort.

There are people out there – including Canada’s top court – that are on your side and here to help.

To read the case, click here.

This post was written by Brendan Stevens, a law student at the University of Toronto. Brendan is a volunteer on JFCY's PLE Team. Content reviewed by a JFCY lawyer. 

Bullying- Words of wisdom and request for feedback

Jasmine Attfield is JFCY's newest Board member, a PLE team member and also a member of JFCY's new PLE subcommittee on cyberbullying. She wrote this post about her experiences being bullied and JFCY's new project:


For 8 years, I was bullied. To be honest, I don't think about it much anymore. It's hard now to think back and remember that I once allowed other people to make me feel that, maybe, life wasn't worth living or that there was something wrong with me that made me unworthy of love and friendship.


Since then, I went to university, I found a job that I love, I’ve made lifelong friendships, and I've even found a partner to share my life with. Other things have happened since I left school too: I got a Facebook account, a twitter account, and a smartphone. In the past 4 years, I have seen how technology has also made bullying easier as well as how it has revealed to the world the realities of school and bullying for young people. However, technology hasn't changed what is hurtful about bullying: social isolation, brutal criticisms, public humiliation, and out-of-control rumors.


Of course, when I was being bullied, I never believed that my parents could understand or help me, but they could and they did. I want to list for you here some of the things that people told me, which proved to be true and helped me get through the hardest years of my life:


- People get nicer. I lived this for myself when, after graduating high school, a boy who had bullied me for years ran into me and apologized for how he had treated me. Most people eventually develop a conscience, and they will come to regret how they treated others in the past and try to avoid being mean in the future.


- Find something that makes you feel good about yourself. You can't control who's mean to you, but you can stop letting them define how you feel about yourself. Keep busy; try new things or work on some goals, like running a marathon or raising money for charity. You will feel better about yourself when you are filling your time productively.


- School is really nothing like real life... at all. When you look back on it, school will be such a small and weird part of your life story, and the people who were mean to you in school will represent a tiny fraction of all the people you will meet. Being “cool” or “nerdy” or “fat” or “awkward” in school will have NO bearing on the rest of your life. I can honestly tell you that I have completely forgotten the last names of most of the people who used to bully me, because in the grand scheme of things, they never mattered to me at all except for the short amount of time when I gave them the power to influence how I felt about myself. 


- You will become more like yourself. One of the things that I found hard in school is that I knew what was "cool", but I was never any good at it. I tried SO HARD to do exactly what was expected of me, but I always came off as SO AWKWARD. Then I realized: I was trying to be someone else, not myself... so then the question became: who am I? I had to work to figure that answer out, and I still have to work every day to not fall into the trap of doing what's "cool" so that someone will like me instead of thinking about whether or not it is actually something that I want to do. Also, by the way, you WILL find people who love you for who you are and those people will make you happier than you ever thought possible, they will make your life so much easier, and you will feel great knowing that you make those people happy in return.


It's amazing to think how much being young has changed in such a short period of time, after so little had changed for so long. Hopefully though, some of that same advice that I got can be helpful to you. The problem is that I don't know whether or not that advice is still useful, so now I have to ask for your help. I need you to tell me: what has changed? do you have any advice to offer other victims of bullying? what kinds of different advice or help would be useful to you?


The world has gotten more complicated since I was your age, and people my age need your help to better understand it. But I am confident that if young and older people work together, we can find solutions to the problem of bullying."

Jasmine, being herself and having a blast!

JFCY's cyberbullying subcommittee would like your feedback on Jasmine's post, on today's forms of bullying, and on what kinds of resources and information you'd like to see about bullying.  Send us an email at jfcyontario@gmail.com, post to our Facebook wall, or leave a note in the blog comments!  If you don't want your comment published on the blog, just say so in your post, since we moderate comments before posting.

Sexting and the law

- By Arif Hussain, PLE Team Member (with legal info by UofT law student Leora Jackson)

“Sexting” – combining text + sex – has become a new cultural product in modern society.  Sexting can involve sending sexually related text messages or images between cell phones.

Even though sexting can seem fun and exciting, and can come out of genuine good feelings and intentions, there can be negative consequences to sexting.  Sometimes, teens will share a picture with another person because they trust them.  However, sometimes those pictures get shared with third parties without the owner’s permission.  That can be embarrassing for the person who sent the picture, and it might be hard to take action or to tell someone else what has happened.  This is why one of the most important things to remember about using digital media is that once something has been emailed, messaged, or posted to someone else, it is almost impossible to maintain control over it, even if you later remove the posting or ask the recipient to delete their copy.

This Toronto Star article talks about some cases related to sexting and provides the comments of legal academics in Canada. 

In Canada, there  are important legal issues involved around sexting, including child pornography and privacy.  This information sheet has information about sexting in Canada, things to consider when you are thinking about sending sexual texts and images, and statistics about the frequency of sexting among Canadian teens and how likely they are to forward or share sexually explict messages that they have received from friends.

JFCY is in the process of creating a series of legal info publications around sexting and other issues related to cyberbullying and ‘tech-bullying’.  Stay tuned to this blog in the coming months for more legal info on these issues.

Arif Hussain is a student at U of T Scarborough.  He's also an active member of the PLE Team, and wrote the script for our Civil Recovery Demands YouTube video

Privacy and Social Networking

-By Leora Jackson, JFCY volunteer and PLE Team Lead

Janine Loves Facebook


Janine is fifteen and uses Facebook to keep in touch with all of her friends.  Since she has friends from school, camp, and after-school activities, Facebook is a great way to be in touch with people.  When she wants to tell something to one of her friends, she posts on that friend’s wall.  Everyone else can see the post, but Janine doesn’t mind.  Last weekend, Janine went to a party at a classmate’s house.  She posted a whole album of photos online from the party.  The next week, there is an article about teen parties in the local paper.  One of Janine’s photos is published in the paper, and Janine gets really upset.  Her parents didn’t know that she attended the party.

What can Janine do to keep this from happening again?  
Was the newspaper allowed to use her picture?

Facebook is a private organization that collects personal information.  As a result, it must follow Canadian law about protecting privacy.  The Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) is a Canadian law that directs private organizations in how to protect the personal information of people who are involved with that organization.  PIPEDA applies in most Canadian provinces, including Ontario, and it limits the ways that an organization can use the personal information that you have provided it.

While people choose which information they post on Facebook, they can also choose who is able to see that information.  For example, Facebook has options that allow you to decide which other internet users can see your wall posts, your photos, your notes, and other information you have shared.  Facebook has even worked with Canada’s Information and Privacy Commissioner to improve its privacy controls in response to complaints.

To prevent this from happening again, Janine needs to update her Facebook privacy settings so that fewer people are able to see the information that she posts on Facebook.  She should also think before she posts, because once information is online, it is impossible to keep total control over it – even if it is later removed from the internet!  Facebook privacy settings are found here.

Since Janine took her pictures, she owns the copyright to them, which means that other people cannot reproduce them without asking her permission.  However, there is a “fair dealing” exception in the Copyright Act that allows news reporters to use copyrighted images as long as they cite the source of the image and, if it is available, the name of the image’s creator.  There are other exceptions as well in the Copyright Act. Janine would have to consult a lawyer to find out whether this use of her picture counted as fair dealing by the newspaper, or fits into another exception. 

However, when Janine posted her photo to Facebook, she granted Facebook a license to use the photo according to the Facebook Terms of Use, which means that Facebook can use Janine’s photo in many different ways without requesting her permission. So, for example, if Facebook used Janine’s photo in its newsletter, she would not be able to complain, since as a Facebook user, she has consented to Facebook’s Terms of Use.

Want to Learn More?

If you are interested in learning more about privacy, especially privacy online, check out the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada’s social networking pages, or their youth site.

If you want to read the laws that we discussed in this post, follow these links: PIPEDA and the Copyright Act.

 A Lesson in Privacy - from the Office of the Privacy Commissioner's
"My Privacy and Me" contest

Leora is in her first year of law school at the University of Toronto.  She is volunteering with JFCY through Pro Bono Students Canada (PBSC) and will be acting as the Public Legal Education Team Lead until March 2012.