WTO litigation is not all about legal arguments:
The [Canadian] federal
government is opening a new front in its decades-old clash with anti-sealing groups, shifting the battlefield from ice floes to the Internet.Concerned that seal protests timed for the Vancouver Winter
Olympics may further bloody the country's reputation, the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade posted a contract for a company to monitor and neutralize “well-organized anti-sealing groups” who are cultivating vast support online through Facebook, Twitter and other social-networking sites....
To repulse that growing online presence, the federal government aims to spend between $50,000 and $100,000 on a firm that can help in “correcting false information and dispelling myths about the Canadian seal hunt,” according to Dana Cryderman, a foreign affairs spokeswoman.
I don't know how effective this particular effort will be, but I think they are right to be aware of the PR aspects of the case. Clever legal arguments are great, of course, but if a particular viewpoint gets "out there" -- in the media, in the policy world, in the halls of the WTO -- it can be hard, in my view, to overcome it even with the best arguments.