lundi 24 février 2014

Homophobic blogger Douglas Handshoe: "Bashing can be beautiful for its own sake."

Doug K. Handshoe, copyright violator 
Douglas K. Handshoe, is a Mississippi accountant and blogger who has targeted Charles Leary, Vaughn Perret, and their Nova Scotia business Trout Point Lodge for years. He has said he's "not homophobic at all."

On Friday, February 14, 2014, Justice Kevin Coady of the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia, Canada, released his decision on Trout Point Lodge et. al. versus Douglas Handshoe. The Nova Scotia Courts then published the eighteen pages of well-articulated reasons at http://www.courts.ns.ca/decisions_recent/documents/2014nssc62.pdf. The judge summarized some of Douglas' publications about his legal opponents:
Handshoe seems to have completely embraced his fervent anti-gay sentiments, and put out on Twitter last month the statement that "bashing can be beautiful for its own sake" while discussing gay donors backing of Mississippi political candidates.
Indeed, even the United States Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals referred to Handshoe's anti-gay invectives as "grotesque" and "reprehensible."

Back in April of last year, Doug wrote about how he's actually the victim of "harassment" from Canada. Huh? He also made sure everyone knew that he would teach those Nova Scotia judges a thing or two, because they've been "beclowned."
I guess you did some educating, right Doug? An additional $390,000 worth! You really taught those Canadian judges a lesson!

Looking at the Valentine's Day decision, it seems like Mr. Handshoe dealt with more than one Nova Scotia judge, and that he actually appeared and defended. No technical default this time. Oh yeah, and now Douglas is on the line for infringing copyright, not just defamation. Unless something has suddenly changed, the SPEECH Act doesn't block copyright judgments, Mr. Doug. In fact, looks like Canada-U.S. treaties mean that each country's copyrights get national treatment. Uh oh.

Trout Point Lodge pointed out on its blog that one of the sponsors of the SPEECH Act, U.S. Senator Leahy, has written about how important copyright is to "free speech." Imagine that. In a speech to the Media Institute, Leahy said:

Our Constitution is the source of another example – the protection of intellectual property.  The only place in the Constitution as initially ratified that specifically mentions a “right” is in the intellectual property clause, which authorizes Congress to provide authors with the exclusive right to their works. 
Copyright protection is not inconsistent with free speech.  It actively advances the goals of the First Amendment by supplying the economic incentive to create and disseminate ideas.  Justice O’Connor famously wrote that copyright law is the very “engine of free expression."
The opposite is also true.  Allowing unfettered theft of copyrighted works, whether online or in the physical world, is a disincentive to speech.  This is most often thought of as a problem for the music or movie industries.  But the news organizations represented here also know that if their work cannot be protected and monetized, they have to cut reporters and editors, and our democracy suffers from fewer sources of quality news reporting and ideas as a result. 
I will continue to promote the Internet but also want to protect the rights of creators in their works, so that there is more expression available for all of us to consider and consume.  This protection for copyrighted works must exist in both the physical and the digital worlds.






Other voices on Douglas K. Handshoe of Mississippi

  • "what a judge calls an “outrageous and highly reprehensible” homophobic Internet smear campaign from a Mississippi blogger." Toronto Star
  • "online attacks are relentless, nasty and homophobic" MSN Canada News 
  •  "A Mississippi blogger owes the owners of a Nova Scotia fishing lodge almost a million dollars after targeting them online in a homophobic smear campaign that tied them inexplicably to a corruption scandal." Daily Brew, Yahoo! Canada News
  • "the principals behind Trout Point Lodge in Yarmouth County have won a defamation case against an anti-homosexual blogger in Mississippi involved in “a misguided attempt to destroy” the businessmen and their East Kemptville inn." Halifax Chronicle-Herald
  • "reprehensible homophobic comments" "grotesque" Judge Walker-Elrod, U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeal
Examples of hate speech published by Douglas Handshoe on Slabbed.