The Register - Judge orders football website to name 'libellous' posters
Guardian - Warning to abusive bloggers as judge tells site to reveal names
OUT-law News - Sheffield Wednesday can't unmask 'saloon-bar moaners', says libel judge
Bartholemew - Identities of Internet "Saloon-Bar Moaners" Protected
Please note that the following thoughts are based primarily on hypothectical circumstances more likely to relate to poorly-regulated weblogs than forums:
- What if the "seven of eleven individuals" who are protected are all the same individual and/or a small group deliberately using "trivial attack(s)" to bolster, boost or 'boot' the primary attack?
- Those running anonymous weblogs and/or poorly-regulated weblogs that allow for repeated anonymous smears 'jokes' will want to take a long, hard look at the costs accrued in revealing the identities of those involved. There are ways of retrieving historical comment-related IP data from months back that you may not even be aware of, and most of them are extremely expensive.
- Expenses that seem prohibitive (to you) could conceivably prevent a libel action, but they could just as easily be dumped right in your lap.
Monday, October 22, 2007
Sheffield Wednesday
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6 comments:
Interesting. Is this suggesting that the commenters themselves are to be held solely liable, rather than the owner of the blog/forum and ISP? Or am I reading too much in to it?
I doubt solely.
There's a simple moral here. If you want to indulge in repeated anonymous smears, remember to do it from an internet cafe.
Heh. I'll add a link for those who can't detect sarcasm:
Woman who stalked July 7 victim on internet is jailed
Point of order, Mr Chairman. If I were to repeat the saying:
"Those who live by the sword, die by the sword"
I wouldn't actually be guilty of advocating that people should be run through with swords.
Plus I should add that if your repeated anonymous smears are of a consistently sinister nature, you probably will get caught, whatever medium you choose to propagate them by.
I took your comment as a mocking suggestion, given how some recent unpleasantness largely concluded with an arrest in an internet cafe.
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