More than a decade ago, John Gilmore, one of the founders of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, coined the phrase "the Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." Last week, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission declined to wade into this issue in a case that placed the spotlight on how Canada's Internet service providers treat illegal content that originates outside the country.

The person behind the case was Richard Warman, an Ottawa lawyer who is one of Canada's leading activists against Internet-based hate. Warman has filed numerous complaints with the Canadian Human Rights Commission against Canadian-based hate sites, arguing that those sites violate the law. The Commission has sided with Warman on several occasions, most recently in a case against a London, Ontario man who was sentenced by a federal court judge to nine months in prison.

Reacting to the jail sentence, several U.S.-based sites directly targeted Warman, mounting death threats against him. Warman asked U.S. law enforcement authorities to take action against the sites, but when they failed to do so (those cases are under investigation), he filed his groundbreaking application with the CRTC.

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