When Minki Basu found out her boyfriend, "Kam Ali," was actually married and using a fake name, she went back to the place she had found him - the Internet - to let the whole world know about it.
In fact, court documents show the Toronto woman went back again and again over a four-month period, to sites such as dontdatehimgirl.com, where she outed the man by his real name, Kaz Akbar.
Ms. Basu's decision put her at the receiving end of a civil suit by Mr. Akbar, a father of two from suburban Markham. In turn, Ms. Basu is countersuing her ex-lover, claiming he threatened to release a sex video he had secretly taken, and that his deception negated her sexual consent, making her a victim of sexual assault.
These and other sordid details, spelled out in a volley of public civil-court filings, have not been tried by a judge or jury and might never be, if a settlement is reached first. Still, the case should give pause to people who think they're free to say anything online without consequence, says a veteran Toronto lawyer in the burgeoning field of online litigation.
"This type of lawsuit is really a good snapshot of what's occurring in the world of Internet law and Internet defamation," said Lorne Honickman, a familiar television commentator on legal issues. "People have to be very careful."
While libel and defamation issues have always been among the first lessons drilled into the heads of budding media professionals, ignorance of these issues is widespread among the millions of amateur bloggers and Web commentators, Mr. Honickman said. The unwitting result has been growth in the kind of litigation now enveloping Ms. Basu and Mr. Akbar.
"As soon as you start writing comments and opinions, you are like any other publisher," he said, "and you could end up being responsible for every word that you've said."
In this case, the number of offending words is substantial, and they started spilling forth last October after Ms. Basu had "refused to accept that Kaz was married, or that her relationship with him had come to an end," according to the statement of claim filed in the names of Mr. Akbar, his brother and the children's education businesses Mr. Akbar owns.
After a series of e-mails and phone calls made by Ms. Basu "in desperation" failed to restore the relationship, "she began a malicious campaign of defaming him, (his brother and his business) on the Internet," between October, 2009, and February, 2010, according to the statement.
In her statement of defence and counterclaim, Ms. Basu disputed Mr. Akbar's version, saying it was she who cut off contact and he who pursued her, asking for "another chance." The defence statement described a police complaint Mr. Akbar made as "false," and refers to an anonymous e-mail he "directly or indirectly sent" to Ms. Basu, containing "two video files depicting Basu engaged in sexual acts."
Ms. Basu acknowledged in her statement that she wrote nine of the 10 Internet postings claimed in Mr. Akbar's lawsuit, many of which included his name, his alias, his picture, his e-mail address and details about his car, business and hobbies, but "all of the articles posted by Basu were posted in good faith, to warn other women about Akbar's predatory misconduct," the statement said. "The articles state true facts, repeat allegations made by Akbar himself, and set out reasonable inferences and expressions of opinion."
While he avoided comment on the merits of Mr. Akbar's and Ms. Basu's claims, Mr. Honickman said the case illustrates how online comments can land people in the midst of expensive, and potentially embarrassing, legal proceedings. Even Web comments made anonymously or under pseudonyms can be actionable, despite privacy guarantees made by Internet service providers, he said.
If people "think they're going to be able to hide behind a cloak of anonymity, maybe they will," he said, "but also, maybe they won't, and that's something they have to understand."