Truth reported a Unknown Caller (4163973000 from area, ON). The following comments were posted: Cyber-defamation 1) Unknown poster An exchange in an internet chat room in 2007 recounted a sexual experience with an unidentified female teacher. Given some factual similarities in the case, a principal of a large secondary high school in Toronto was identified as the potential abuser. After an initial investigation, the school board concluded the case was a mistaken identity, but this did not prevent the re-posting of the allegations to a number of other websites by a malicious poster(s): Pricipal (sic), GORDANA ANNE STEFULIC, School, Ontario, cautioned for having secual intercourse with an 19-year-old male student on three separate occasions dating back to 2000, not only on Toronto District School Board property but also in her car near a local golf course and the apartment of a friend. A discipline committee panel held a private hearing into these incidents relating to failure to observe appropriate studenteducator boundaries. Subsequently at the boards and the students require that the incident not be made public it was agreed that professional psychological counselling for a period of one year be required. After confirming with the school staff that the information was untrue, the school board attempted to remove the information from the Internet to protect the professional authority and dignity of the teacher (in the workplace), which was challenging since the postings occurred in multiple jurisdictions outside of Canada. Using a demand letter, counsel was able to put the identifiable individual or corporation with the power to remove the harmful information on notice that they may be held responsible. The experience of the board was that evidence of other sites removing the information helped convince a webmaster to remove the post. A secondary course of action was to reply to the offending information, providing a real name, position and contact information, confirming that it is inaccurate and warning other posters not to re-post it. Google Alerts helped track compliance and maintain monitoring. Where website administrators are uncooperative, it was extremely difficult to identify the anonymous posters from the web site without a court order, which are typically only provided in the most serious cases. In my experience, individuals targeted in this manner by another person or small group of people for primarily personal reasons are much easier to deal with than public figures or individuals tied into an issue of public interest. The panelists indicated that non-compliance was typically more related to administrative workload than freedom of expression issues, but for these higher profile cases greater resistance is to be expected. Forced removal of anonymous posts is historically rare but will be a growing phenomenon, and Ive posted on this before. Permalink: http://www.numberinvestigator.com/phone/416-397-3000.html
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