I've recently been following a developing story about a football club. But before you all press the back button it is actually relevant to us all and I would think it is even of interest to football haters (shock!). The club in question is Sheffield Wednesday and the board of directors are attempting to sue some people who posted perceived defamatory comments on a message board about the directors. The owner of the website has been forced by a judge to release the real names and address of four posters, although he denied permission for more identities to be revealed. A slightly more detailed overview plus a review from an online-law firm It does raise the issue of just how anonymous you and your pseudonym makes you, and it is also bringing forth who is actually ultimately responsible for posts on a message board - the poster, the administrator or the hoster? In this case the court action is resting on the posters, although the administrator is being heavily leant on as well. Part of a response from the administrator Finally, what is the difference between a joke/flippant comment and something you could get sued for? George Bush eating his daily toddlers on toast. Or, just possibly, the decision of a judge who may not be able to pick up the context from a few comments by one character? It could be greasy tightrope that we walk upon...
In the US, a political figure cannot win a case for libel/defamation unless he can prove what is said about him is a lie. This is based on US precedent, and therefore does not apply to the UK or other countries. I did a paper on the original precedent for this when I was in university. It was a Supreme Court case called New York Times v Sullivan.
Well, for a start, unless you go to a lot of trouble, you're never anonymous on the net, and even if you did there is always an FBI-geek (or nerd ?) somewhere who will find a way of locating you sooner or later, but the main point to all of this is that not only do you have to do something "wrong" to be bothered, but also that the person you did it to has to care. Basically, saying Dubya's favourite barbecue food is baby-onna-stick won't get you anywhere much because there are plenty more people out there saying much worse things and he and his evil henchmen (the ones with the helmets that cover the whole face and all that) have better things to do... like world domination. Again. But in this case, the number of message boards about Sheffield Wossnames must be pretty limited, so for a start, it would be pretty easy to find. I mean it's not like saying that Victoria Beckham is a transsexual with a wooden leg, that would just get lost in the 2 trillion results google would throw up (wouldn't we all) if you typed her name in. Also, it probably wasn't some flippant comment such as the above (haven't read the links yet, too early) but something more serious. Something worth defending themselves against, worth the legal hassle, after all, lawyers don't go cheap. Or they'd be chickens. I need some sleep.
I haven't actually read any of it either, but based on my uninformed and totally biased view I'd say the complainants are probably just a bunch of crusty old football management types (much like conservative politicians) who are doing themselves a lot of PR damage, making themselves look like crusty old farts, by bothering with this in the first place.
But you knew there were 14 messages, you must have read some of it! I hereby propose that you, Maljonic, are a filthy liar - wait, you know who I am... Although that summary is pretty much spot on. Especially in a business like football, where you are reliant on your supporters to turn up and give you money - it's practically corporate suicide to alienate them.
like all moderately intelligent people who have never committed any crimes of any sort anywhere ever, i'm not so much afraid of what the FBI might catch me doing as i am afraid of what the FBI might fake evidence to 'prove' i did. before you start assuming roman's hijacked my account because no one listens to the paranoid ranting he posts under his own nick, this is actually founded in reality. there've been a number of convictions overturned because the FBI crime lab had to divulge that an internal investigation revealed there was a lot of falsified evidence being passed off as legitimate. i'm not worried about honest cops. also, I'm not worried about crooked lawyers. what one lawyer can try to pin on you, a better lawyer can get you out of. and, like all moderately intelligent people who don't work in law or marketing and thus still have my soul, my take on lawyers is fairly straight forward: ignore them. the same goes true for 'spying' done in the name of 'law enforcement'. ignore them. if someone wants to monitor my internet traffic then let them. I'm on CCTV 90% of the time i'm out in public, and i don't let it affect how i live. after all, if the evidence is real or fake, you just gotta find the best lawyer and you'll still get away with it.
Driving someone to where they already are is just a waste of fossil fuel. GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH !
Hey! I have a soul! Here I can prove it... See it just suffers from a split personality... There was a recent case in Australia where a an accounting software company tried to sue a web forum host for posts made by members about how crap the software and customer service was. the case was dropped before going to court because the software company was so unlikely to win, as they had to prove that it wasn't true, that there had been damages from the posts and that the web host was directly responsible for the posts. Besides suing over it just brought to the countries attention that these people thought the software was crap rather than just the people on that board. I assume a similar thing will happen in this case that suing will do more damage than good. With instead of just the users of that club's board seeing the 14 posts but the whole world seeing them, doing a lot more damage than any web forum could do... Oh the stupidity of the high and mighty when their reputation is on the line and when they hire a lawyer.
There's another side to this - If you were a businessperson and your staff or your customers or potential customers thought badly of you, wouldn't you want to know how they felt so that you could try to fix things so you don't lose all you your good employees or have all your customers go somewhere else? As a matter of fact, just yesterday one of my managers complemented me for circulating the url to a website which is all about how crappy my company is.
