🚀 go-pugleaf

      ELECTRONIC FRONTIER CANADA (EFC) --- PRESS RELEASE

(For immediate release --- December 13, 1994)

	CANADIAN SUPREME COURT JUSTICE OFFERS CAUTIONS ON 
	   UNIVERSITY CENSORSHIP OF ELECTRONIC SPEECH

In the past year, many Canadian universities have banned Usenet
newsgroups such as "alt.tasteless" and "alt.sex.stories".  Some
University administrators claimed this censorship was justified,
and even mandatory, because of alleged violations of the
obscenity provisions of the Criminal Code.  

Now, a justice of Canada's highest court offers a word of caution.
In a speech given on November 26 at the "Symposium on Free Speech
and Privacy in the Information Age" held at the University of
Waterloo, Mr. Justice John Sopinka stated,

	 "Difficult issues also arise in the context of universities
	 which take action to ban certain communications found to be
	 offensive and undesirable. First, one must ask whether it is
	 not preferable to permit the expression and allow the criminal
	 or civil law to deal with the individual who publishes
	 obscene, defamatory or hateful messages rather than prevent
	 speech before it can be expressed.  Otherwise, individuals may
	 be putting themselves in the positions of courts to determine
	 what is obscene and what is acceptable."

Later, Mr. Justice Sopinka went on to raise the possibility that
actions of universities may fall under Charter scrutiny when they
resort to official censorship.  In the 1990 case _McKinney v. 
University of Guelph_, the Supreme Court ruled that, in some cases,
universities were not government entities and hence not subject
to Charter scrutiny.  But Mr. Justice Sopinka raised the possibility
that this might not be the case for institutional censorship:

	"_McKinney_ left open the possibility that some form of activity
	by the University might constitute government action and thus,
	subject to the Charter. If governing bodies engage in acts of
	censorship, they run the risk of being classed as government
	action and subject to the control of the Charter. In this
	regard it is pertinent to observe that in the United States the
	First Amendment has been applied to State universities."

Somewhat ironically, Mr. Justice Sopinka's own freedom of speech 
is limited when it comes to speaking about issues that may someday
come before the Supreme Court.  Nevertheless, members of Electronic
Frontier Canada were encouraged by what they heard.  David Jones,
an EFC member, and a professor at McMaster University said,
"We are glad to hear that such a prominent and respected judge
acknowledges the seriousness of the issues raised by university
censorship of electronic communications, such as computer bulletin
boards."

Jeffrey Shallit, professor of computer science at the University of
Waterloo, agreed:  "Mr. Justice Sopinka's analysis raises the
possibility that official University censorship could result
in legal liability under the Charter.  Perhaps this will
cause University administrators to think twice about official
censorship in the future."

The complete text of Mr. Justice Sopinka's remarks, raising
many other interesting questions about law in the information age,
can be accessed by gopher from the EFC archives using the command:
	
     gopher -p "1/community/efc/doc/sfsp" gopher.ee.mcgill.ca


		-- 30 --

For further information, or to arrange interviews:

Prof. Jeffrey Shallit   phone: (519) 888-4804      fax: (519) 885-1208
email: shallit@graceland.uwaterloo.ca

Electronic Frontier Canada, online archives:

Gopher:                gopher://gopher.ee.mcgill.ca/11/community/efc
World-Wide-Web:        http://www.ee.mcgill.ca/efc/efc.html
Anonymous FTP:         ftp://insight.mcmaster.ca/pub/efc