March 14, 2006

Two white supremacists were fined for spreading hate messages on their Web sites in a case that is also believed to be the first time a Canadian Web hosting company has been found liable for hate messages on its servers.

The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal ordered Toronto’s Alexan Kulbashian and London, Ontario’s James Richardson to stop distributing hate messages, fining them penalties totaling $13,000.

The complainant, Ottawa lawyer Richard Warman, was awarded $5,000.

In February 2002, Warman launched a complaint against the two. He also launched a complaint against Canadian Ethnic Cleansing Team, an organization to which the two men belonged, Kulbashian's Web hosting company AffordableSpace.com, and the Web site tri-cityskins.com.

The ruling states that the tri-cityskins Web site contained messages that included Holocaust jokes and racist jokes about blacks, Jews, Muslims and other minorities.

Kulbashian was ordered to pay Warman $5,000 for identifying him in a hate message, while Kulbashian and Richardson are also ordered to pay $1,000 in penalties. Canadian Ethnic Cleansing Team and Affordable Space were each fined $3,000.

Source: The WHIR