Indeed, Elliott’s chief sin appears to have been that he dared to disagree with the two young feminists and political activists.

He and Guthrie, for instance, initially fell out over his refusal to endorse her plan to “sic the Internet” upon a young man in Northern Ontario who had invented a violent video game, where users could punch an image of a feminist video blogger ...

Guthrie Tweeted at the time that she wanted the inventor’s “hatred on the Internet to impact his real-life experience” and Tweeted to prospective employers to warn them off the young man and even sent the local newspaper in his town a link to the story about the game.

Elliott disagreed with the tactic and Tweeted he thought the shaming “was every bit as vicious as the face-punch game”...

... the idea that all it takes to end up charged with criminal harassment is vigorous participation in online debate with those who will not brook dissent “will have a chilling effect on people’s ability to communicate, and not just on Twitter”...

...Guthrie pointed out once in cross-examination that feelings of fear, like all feelings, “develop over time”, and snapped that she was sorry she wasn’t “a perfect victim” who behaved like a conventional victim.

The criminal harassment charge is rooted in the alleged victim’s perception of the offending conduct.

The statute says if that conduct caused the alleged victims “reasonably, in all the circumstances, to fear for their safety”, that’s good enough.

Yet Guthrie and Reilly didn’t behave as though they were remotely frightened or intimidated: They convened a meeting of friends to discuss how Elliott should be publicly shamed; they bombarded their followers with furious tweets and retweets about him (including a grotesque suggestion from someone pretending she was a 13-year-old that he was a pedophile)...

... “They are very accomplished, politically savvy women. If they can’t handle being mentioned in the tail end of a political discussion (on Twitter), then they’re in the wrong business.”

of the meeting both women attended in August of 2012, to discuss how Elliott would be called out, “That was a conspiracy to commit a criminal offence … they were conspiring to go out and publicly shame Mr. Elliott.”

That Reilly, who was anonymous on Twitter and who directed her own volley of hateful tweets at Elliott, should come “to this court and the police and say she’s being criminally harassed is an abuse of the system.”

Prosecutor Marnie Goldenberg made only the briefest remarks, and refused to provide Postmedia with a copy of her written arguments, saying it wasn’t her practice.