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admin01
Site Admin
Joined: 30 Jun 2005
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 Posted: Mon Oct 29, 2007 1:20 pm Post subject: Warning to abusive bloggers / judge orders names revealed |
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Warning to abusive bloggers as judge tells site to reveal names
* Clare Dyer, legal editor
* The Guardian,
* Monday October 22 2007
(Quoted in full from article linked at the head of the page and also below the text)
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Disgruntled fans of Sheffield Wednesday who vented their dissatisfaction with the football club's bigwigs in anonymous internet postings may face expensive libel claims after the chairman, chief executive and five directors won a high-court ruling last week forcing the owner of a website to reveal their identity.
The case, featuring the website owlstalk.co.uk, is the second within days to highlight the danger of assuming that the apparent cloak of anonymity gives users of internet forums and chatrooms carte blanche to say whatever they like.
In another high court case last week, John Finn, owner of the Sunderland property firm Pallion Housing, admitted just before he was due to be cross-examined that he was responsible for a website hosting a scurrilous internet campaign about a rival housing organisation, Gentoo Group, its employees and owner, Peter Walls.
Exposing the identity of those who post damaging lies in cyberspace is a growth area for libel lawyers.
Dan Tench, of Olswang, the law firm representing Gentoo, said: "This case illustrates an increasingly important legal issue: proving who is responsible for the publication of anonymous material on the internet. This is likely to be a significant issue in defamation cases in the future."
The website Dadsplace, set up to campaign against perceived injustices in the family courts, had a forum where anonymous postings made various accusations against Gentoo, Mr Walls and his staff.
Those posting the comments went to considerable lengths to hide their identity, and Gentoo's lawyers ran up a bill estimated to be about £300,000 - which Mr Finn will now have to pick up, along with any damages awarded - taking the case to court and amassing circumstantial evidence that he was behind the website.
Revealing the Sheffield Wednesday fans was comparatively easy since there was no secret about the website owner. The next move was to apply for a court order requiring him to reveal the identities of "Halfpint" and the other fans behind what the club's lawyers described as a "sustained campaign of vilification". Fans made serious allegations against the club's chairman, Dave Allen, and directors and shareholders.
The club's lawyers asked the judge, Richard Parkes QC, to order disclosure about the identity of 11 fans.
But the judge decided some fans, whose postings were merely "abusive" or likely to be understood as jokes, should keep their anonymity.
The judge ordered that three fans whose postings might "reasonably be understood to allege greed, selfishness, untrustworthiness and dishonest behaviour", should be unmasked. Their right to maintain their anonymity and express themselves freely was outweighed by the directors' entitlement to take action to protect their reputation, he said.
Court orders obliging websites to disclose the identity of users posting anonymous defamatory remarks began in 2001.
Dominic Bray, of K&L Gates, Sheffield Wednesday's solicitors, said: "There seem to be quite a lot of websites that are using their anonymity to make comments about people and think that there shouldn't be any liability for it. But the internet is no different to any other place of publication, and if somebody is making defamatory comments about people then they should be held responsible for it. What these cases do is just confirm that's the law - the law applies to the internet as much as it does to anything else." |
Link :- Guardian.co.uk/technology/blogging
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nightshift
Joined: 23 Jan 2006
Posts: 351
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| Posted: Sat Mar 01, 2008 3:11 am Post subject: |
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I think you have to be very careful about your internet activities these days. I have read about people who have failed to get jobs because of things they have done or written online.
There was an item about a Police Officer who failed to get promotion because of what he had written on Facebook http://www.pinknews.co.uk/news/articles/2005-6975.html
Mistakes by sites can be embarrassing. There was an MP who, last December, could not access his Facebook account because the site software decided he was not real. I do not know if it was because his surname is Webb
http://www.reuters.com/article/internetNews/idUSL1972684520071219?feedType=RSS&feedName=internetNews&pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0
I am sure I read of at least one company that routinely checks message boards to make sure their potential managers have never posted any drunken antics on YouTube because it could slur their company's reputation if a competitor were to see them.
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ICECOLD
Joined: 16 Jul 2005
Posts: 287
Location: NORTH WEST
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| Posted: Sat Mar 01, 2008 8:54 am Post subject: |
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We had a Thornton Coffee shop open in the town. The Manager who
was there to oversee the opening of the shop apparently wrote his
less than complimentary comments about the town on his blog on
Facebook, resulting in some angry local residents smashing the shop
windows and demanding his removal. A very short time later the
Manager was recalled to Head Office!
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Ellie
Joined: 03 Jul 2005
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Location: Southern England
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Lizzie
Joined: 05 Jul 2005
Posts: 957
Location: Berkshire
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| Posted: Sat Mar 08, 2008 8:11 pm Post subject: |
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| one of my boys got stalked by a girl on myspace She found all the places he went on line and joined them to send him messages
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Ellie
Joined: 03 Jul 2005
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Location: Southern England
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nightshift
Joined: 23 Jan 2006
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| Posted: Wed Mar 12, 2008 2:20 am Post subject: |
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| Sorry to hear that Lizzie. How did your son deal with it?
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Lizzie
Joined: 05 Jul 2005
Posts: 957
Location: Berkshire
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| Posted: Wed Mar 12, 2008 11:47 pm Post subject: |
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| He reported her and she got banned He got himself a new email He found out he could keep his profile private so she couldnt see it
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Supertrowel
Joined: 07 Jul 2005
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Ellie
Joined: 03 Jul 2005
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Location: Southern England
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| Posted: Sat May 17, 2008 10:23 pm Post subject: |
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| Supertrowel wrote: |
| A few salutory lessons in what can happen, even with the anonymity people believe they have online |
But you're not anonymous online, everything you do is trackable and even if you try to clear a hard drive it can be recovered, same as if a hard drive decides to eat everything, but it's expensive to do.
Didn't the government make some sort of law saying that ISPs and phone companies have to keep records for a couple of years?
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Ellie
Joined: 03 Jul 2005
Posts: 1584
Location: Southern England
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| Posted: Sat Oct 18, 2008 11:53 pm Post subject: |
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It's interesting to see how this subject, of being careful what you say online, has developed.
A friend who visit MoneySavingExpert saw this
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| The Consumer Action Group is being sued for libel. ..... |
The thread on MSE has now been deleted, but there's information on the CAG site, all you need to do is google the words I've quoted to see what's happening.
As for the CAG, I've used the site for reference relating to bank charges, it's an incredibly helpful site.
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Ali
Joined: 07 Nov 2005
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Lizzie
Joined: 05 Jul 2005
Posts: 957
Location: Berkshire
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Good grief Lizzie, that's awful.