No Host Liability For Readers’ Vitriol On Unmoderated Forum

Until very recently, news media and other forum hosts have been coping with a significant yet ill-defined area of Canadian law concerning their liability for third party user-generated content posted by their readers.

Weaver v. Corcoran, 2015 BCSC 165 is the first Canadian case to explicitly address whether the operator of an internet forum is liable for reader comments that may be defamatory of specific individuals.  The answer is no, unless the operator or forum host is aware of the comments and does not act immediately to remove them.

In the case, Dr. Weaver, a Canadian climate scientist and professor at the University of Victoria (and currently, B.C. MLA and deputy leader of the Green Party) sued the National Post for its own columns as well as responsive reader comments published on the National Post’s internet forum which “attacked the plaintiff’s character in a vitriolic manner”.   The practice of the National Post was not to actively moderate comments but