It's been a fairly common issue. I remember in the 2000s, the fact that a known piracy site was located in another country without the same copyright laws most have in place made it extremely difficult for authorities to have it taken down permanently. Every time they succeeded, it came right back and it was a hassle all around.
Fortunately, finding information on a domain isn't all that difficult. All web sites are registered with ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. They also handle top level domain registration (which is very expensive). They're the guys who approve applications for new domains such as dot com.
In this case, I found that the site is hosted by GoDaddy. It's location is listed as Arizona, so in this case it appears that the foreign country where the site is located would be the very state that Capuano resides in, which undoubtedly has to make the entire fiasco even more frustrating for the victim. I honestly expected an entirely different result that actually made things significantly more complicated.
Now my concern is this: with it being hosted by a company located in the United States, couldn't they just send a copy of the judgement to GoDaddy?
I don't know, but I very much doubt Canadian courts have the power to force a business in a foreign country to do anything. Otherwise, to take an extreme example, China or Russia would be having a field day.
IMO, we are being very slow to realize how the internet is being widely used to promote hatred of different groups of people and individuals, to spread conspiracy theories, to encourage and support people to act in anti-social, anti-government, anti-everything ways, and to support criminal enterprises.
IMO, we're only beginning to see a concerted effort to try to force the companies that profit from the internet, including social media like FB, to monitor and delete harmful content. It's a 180 turn, for what was originally seen as a wonderful tool to promote peace, love and harmony. I think it's going to be a long, hard, messy business to try to work it out.
IMO, if the website is, in fact, located in Arizona, it might be good for the victim to lobby in Arizona for it to be taken down. Perhaps she has.
It seems to me, we long had a system where you could hate someone as much as you liked, but no newspaper would publish your venoms, and there were other defamation actions available if the hater made public allegations. IMO, turning this very stubborn guy into a criminal is just increasing his sense of angry self-righteousness.
