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Quebecor’s lawyer maintained the case is about trademark infringement, not freedom of expression, as satirical site co-founder Janick Murray-Hall has argued.

The lawyer said Quebecor favours freedom of expression and is not opposed to parody sites. It is not seeking to close the website, he said, but it wants an end to the use of the Journal’s trademark and a URL that is so similar to the Journal’s.

The first witness was Mathieu Turbide, the vice-president responsible for digital content at Quebecor Media, who said that as fake news sites have multiplied, the name attached to a news source is important. Turbide testified that the proliferation of online sources has made it difficult for media consumers to distinguish real from invented content.

He presented e-mails from readers complaining about the publication of false information they thought was from the Journal de Montreal, when in fact it was published by the parody site. “If this person asks us the question, it is because she thinks that the news comes from us,” Turbide said.

He also offered up evidence from Facebook of people attacking the Journal de Montreal under content published or shared by the Journal de Mourreal.

“For us there is a fairly obvious risk of confusion and then, after that confusion, a degradation of the brand,” Turbide said. “From the moment people start to have a doubt that when they read our content, that it’s not necessarily verified or it’s not true … there is a damage to the reputation and to the credibility of our brand.”