Blacklock's Reporter

Blacklock's Reporter (founded October 2012) is an Ottawa-based Internet publication covering Canadian government administration. It publishes several articles each day, along with book reviews, poetry and guest commentaries.

Six reporters, including Tom Korski, banded together to launch the news site. Its name is derived from a Montreal Gazette war correspondent, Thomas Hyland Blacklock, (died 1934) who had been head of the Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery.

In November, 2012, Blacklock's won a dispute with the Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery to have its journalists accredited.

In November 2016, the Federal Court of Canada rejected an action for breach of copyright by Blacklock's against the Department of Finance of Canada in a case that analyzed fair dealing of copyright material. The Department of Finance raised the novel defence of "copyright abuse by a copyright troll". The Court held that "there are certainly some troubling aspects to Blacklock's business practices", but found it unnecessary to reach a decision on the question of "copyright abuse", since it found the sharing of paywall-protected articles among a relatively small group of people connected with the news item was fair dealing. However, the Court did order Blacklock's to pay the Department costs of $65,000, stating that "the litigation should never have been commenced, let alone carried to trial", and that Blacklock's demand for compensation was "based on unwarranted and self-serving assertion of indiscriminate and widespread infringement". Blacklock's had earlier won an Ontario Small Claims Court lawsuit over breach of its paywalls. Blacklocks has filed several other paywall protection cases that are still awaiting trial.