Internet Posting Comes Within "Broadcast" for Purpose of Libel

In Ontario, statutory libel includes defamatory words in a broadcast. The question before the Ontario Superior Court in the recent decision of Bahlieda v. Santa was whether defamatory material published on a website and made available to the public over the Internet is a "broadcast" within the meaning of the Libel and Slander Act of Ontario ("the Act"). Under the Act, the plaintiff has a period of six weeks, subsequent to discovering the broadcast, within which to notify the defendant of the matter; otherwise, the libel action will fail. In this case, the defendant had posted allegedly defamatory material concerning the plaintiff on his website in May 2001. However, the plaintiff didn't serve her libel notice until the following November. Once the action was commenced, the defendant applied to the Court for dismissal of the part of the plaintiff's claim concerning the material posted on the website, alleging that the publication came within the definition of a "broadcast" under the Act and consequently the plaintiff was out of time. The Court noted that any interpretation of "broadcast" under the Act had to take into account the specific purpose of the Act, which was to "single out information which is transmitted to mass audiences, where maximum harm to reputation can be done." In concluding that "placing material on the Internet via a website where it may be accessed by a large audience" comes within the definition of libel, the Court reasoned that, although traditionally the legislation was intended to include radio and television, the "Internet, sometimes more than traditional broadcast media, reaches a mass audience." Since the plaintiff had failed to give notice to the defendant within the specified period after discovering the web posting, that part of her claim must fail. This case further develops this growing area of law after Weiss v. Sawyer, a decision of the Ontario Court of Appeal in 2002, where a "newspaper" disseminated on the Internet was held to come within the Act, but the status of an Internet posting was specifically left unanswered. Summary by: Peter Wang