Niemela v. Malamas Page 3 BACKGROUND [3] Mr. Niemela is a Vancouver lawyer. He has been the victim of a campaign of In October 2012 and in March 2013, postings concerning Mr. Niemela were placed on two Internet sites: www.ripoffreport.com (“Ripoffreport”) and www.reviewstalk.com (“Reviewstalk”). The postings contain statements about Mr. Niemela and his conduct as a lawyer that are clearly defamatory. Mr. Niemela attributes at least some of this conduct to a former client, the defendant Strato Malamas, who he now believes to be an associate of the Hells Angels. [4] The police became involved in the matter and identified and spoke to a suspect in May 2012. Thereafter the extortion attempts ended and no further defamatory postings were added to the Reviewstalk and Ripoffreport websites. It is an unfortunate aspect of the Internet, however, that the postings remain and turn up whenever Mr. Niemela’s name is searched on the Internet. [5] Mr. Niemela took no steps concerning the Internet postings until the fall of 2014, choosing instead to see whether the postings would affect his law practice. He is now convinced that his practice and his billings have dropped dramatically because of the postings and their general accessibility through search engines such as Google. [6] Mr. Niemela is concerned not only with the negative postings on the Reviewstalk and Ripoffreport sites, but also with the text that accompanies the URLs listed in the Google search results. This text is commonly referred to as a “snippet”. While it is not necessary to replicate the text from offending sites, an example of a snippet may be of assistance to the reader: Ripoff Report │ Glenn J. Niemela Complaint Review … www.ripoffreport.com/...glenn-j-niemela/glenn-j-niemela-hes-a-scam... Oct 18, 2012 - Glenn J. Niemela Complaint Review. Glenn J. Niemela He’s a scam artist and steals from his clients while doing nothing to help them with their… 2015 BCSC 1024 (CanLII) vilification, harassing telephone calls, and extortion attempts since September 2012.