Research professionals who use the Internet are keenly aware that using one search engine alone is rarely good enough to find all the places where relevant information might be located.

Still, when we find a place that contains a significant amount of information about a particular subject we may be inclined to focus on that place and our ambitions to continue our hunt begin to fade. This approach can be detrimental to effective open source research.

It’s also very important to continually re-visit old sources to see if anything has changed.

As an example, in 2007 the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal heard a case between Complainant Richard Warman, and Respondent Jessica Beaumont (Warman v. Beaumont, 2007 CHRT 49). In his complaint Warman alleged that comments posted by Beaumant on the Canadian section of a forum hosted on the website Stormfront.org would expose:

“Rastafarians, Jews, gays and lesbians, Chinese, Hispanics, blacks, Aboriginals, and other non-whites to hatred and/or contempt”.”

In his analysis of the issues, Athanasios D. Hadjis, the Member of the Tribunal who heard the case felt that the evidence met the requirements of an offence under Section 13 of the Act. The information was posted on the Internet which was “by means of the facilities of a telecommunication undertaking” and that Beaumont’s messages would expose “identifiable persons” to hatred or contempt. The Tribunal ordered Beaumont to pay a fine of $1,500.

The Tribunal ordered Beaumont to pay additional compensation to Warman directly for postings that she made on pages maintained by her on two separate social networking sites: EveryonesSpace.com and MySpace.com.

The time line is important. The complaint was filed in early 2005 and although the posts on Stormfront continued after 2005, the posts on Myspace and EveryonesSpace did not appear until early 2006, well after the initial complaint was filed.

The posts on the social networking sites were comments and doctored photos which the Tribunal deemed to have not only been discriminatory but to have been aimed directly at Warman himself; presumably in retaliation to him filing the complaint.

It follows then that the MySpace and EveryonesSpace evidence was also submitted later on in the course of the Tribunal hearing.

As an aside Everyonesspace.com is now defunct and the domain is for sale.

It is my experience that people who are heavy Internet posters rarely restrict their contributions to one location. It is not uncommon for an individual to post on multiple blogs and forums; or to maintain accounts in multiple virtual worlds. Evidence relevant to a case may be available in one or many of these locations.

Furthermore, other people’s commentary, which can be relevant depending on the situation, can also be found in multiple places.

In summary when researching an incident which involves the use of the Internet, it is imperative to avoid a myopic approach. As an former employer of mine used to say “You never know what you don’t know.”