Multivision's Nazerali quizzed on Deep Capture outage 2015-04-21 20:16 ET - Street Wire
by Mike Caswell
On Tuesday afternoon, the defamation trial Aly Nazerali is pursuing against the Deep Capture website heard about an injunction that temporarily shut down the site in late 2011. Defence lawyer Roger McConchie, cross-examining Mr. Nazerali, led him through several portions of the website that did not contain any reference to him, but were nonetheless made unavailable by that injunction. Mr. McConchie also asked Mr. Nazerali about his efforts to delete Deep Capture material that appeared on other websites.
The injunction is part of a lawsuit that Mr. Nazerali began against Deep Capture on Oct. 19, 2011. He complained about a series of chapters on the website that portrayed him as a drug dealer, terrorist, fraud artist and gangster, among other things. The defendants include Patrick Byrne, the short-selling conspiracy theorist who runs Overstock.com Inc. and Deep Capture. Also a defendant is journalist Mark Mitchell. The men contest the allegations and are fighting the case.
Much of the court time on Tuesday afternoon revolved around an injunction that Mr. Nazerali sought on Oct. 19, 2011, the same day that he filed the lawsuit. The injunction, obtained in the Supreme Court of British Columbia without notice to Deep Capture, effectively shut down the site, ordering its host to stop operation of the domain www.deepcapture.com. It also ordered the defendants to cease publishing any statements about Mr. Nazerali. It remained in effect until Dec. 2, 2011, after which the court declined to renew it, and the site resumed operations. One of the arguments the defence is pursuing is that Deep Capture suffered substantial losses during that court-ordered outage.
Mr. McConchie did not spend any time on those losses Tuesday afternoon, but he did have Mr. Nazerali go through several portions of the Deep Capture website that had no reference to him. These included 10 of the chapters that formed the basis of the website. In response to questions about each chapter, Mr. Nazerali confirmed that he had skimmed through it before seeking the injunction, and understood the amount of material that each chapter contained.
At one point in the questioning Mr. McConchie suggested that Mr. Nazerali had asked the court "to shut down the entire Deep Capture website including the parts that did not pertain to me." Mr. Nazerali replied, "I asked the court for justice." He added, in other parts of his testimony, that his lawyer handled the specific documents.
In other parts of the afternoon Mr. Nazerali testified about the fact that much of the Deep Capture material started appearing on other websites after the injunction. These sites included Raging Bull, Investor Village and a site called Before It's News. Mr. McConchie asked Mr. Nazerali, in a somewhat repetitive manner, if he had read the sites, and about any efforts he had made to identify the site owners and have the material removed.
Mr. Nazerali said he had not made any efforts to identify the owners of the websites, but did say that he had a public relations firm working on his behalf to have the material removed. He confirmed that the firm contacted the sites and in some instances did succeed in having the chapters taken down.
Another matter that Mr. McConchie covered Tuesday afternoon was any efforts that Mr. Nazerali made to contact Mr. Byrne, who was listed on Deep Capture's website as its editor-in-chief, before obtaining the injunction. He established that Mr. Nazerali made no effort.
In another line of questioning, the purpose of which was not clear, Mr. McConchie asked about other items that appeared on the Deep Capture home page. These included a phrase that appeared near its logo, which read, "We are the red pill." Mr. Nazerali said the phrase meant nothing to him. Mr. McConchie also asked about portions of the home page that mentioned awards the site had won. These included the 2008 Weblog Awards and being an X Marks Top 25 site. Mr. Nazerali replied, "None of those names meant anything to me."
The trial continues Wednesday. |
