The New Year’s Day slaying of Stefanie Facebook, and social networking in general, is redefining how society interacts on the Internet, and how the law cannot keep up with these new social definitions.
The Toronto Star’s article “Gag orders in the Facebook age” quotes:
The Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA) prohibits the publication of information “… if it would identify the child or young person as having been a victim of, or as having appeared as a witness in connection with, an offence committed or alleged to have been committed by a young person.”
The key here is “the publication of information”. The article goes on to state:
[…] while media outlets are prohibited from naming the victim and the youths charged, their names and faces are all over Facebook.
“It’s a very good question if the people who post things on Facebook are actually breaking the YCJA,” Peel Const. Wayne Patterson said. “I guess it all boils down to whether Facebook is eventually determined by somebody that it is a publication.”
Alain Charette, media relations spokesperson for the Department of Justice, said the restriction “does apply to the Web, including Facebook … generally publication covers a very wide spectrum.”
Facebook is not a newpaper article, or a publication in the traditional sense. Facebook represents social processes digitally, in this case, mourning. It’s our virtual meeting grounds, not a series of published articles or blog posts. It’s as if a group of Stefanie’s friends got together on the sidewalk on which she was slain but could not mention her name as they were talking about her life.
So, is Facebook a publication? Just because something is on the Internet, is it published? Technically yes, but is that the intention? This blog posting is published, and is intended to be a publication, but the group I create on Facebook is not intended to be a publication.
Our society is being redefined in this digital age. The law, as usual, lags behind.
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