Slashdot Mirror
UK's Demon Settles Usenet Libel Case
Uri writes "A BBC article has just reported that Laurence Godfrey, a physicist, has won around $400,000 from Demon Internet, a leading UK ISP, over defamatory posting about him which appeared on usenet. Note that under English Law, ISPs are held responsible for defamatory material if they do not take reasonable care to ensure such material is not published, and if they do not remove such material when alerted to it. It was the latter that Demon refused to do, and which prompted the legal action. The case now threatens to put an huge strain on all English ISPs as they could be forced to monitor all material trafficking through their systems. Go England! "
An interesting snippet from the article: "Although such discussion forums are often full of robust, forthright and even offensive opinions posted by individuals, the case hinged on whether Demon could be treated as publisher of the material." I wonder how well British universities would like to be treated as publishers, and therefore Net-content nannies ...
Even in the good 'ol US of A, you can get in trouble for making defanatory statements -- it's known as the slander and libel laws.
Personally, I don't see how this is any different than a TV station which refuses to pull defamatory advertising. Just because it's the internet does not mean that you somehow have a license to broadcast defamatory materials. I mean, come on! It's not like there are no limits on free speach offline, either -- ask you local kiddie porn purveyor.
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Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
-1 Libel
:-)
It's hard to pin down an exact date, but it was sometime in the mid 90's. Most of the newsgroups have become vast wastelands of spam and trolls.
A small handful of groups survived, primarily by aggressively complaining over each and every abusive posting.
Unfortunately, some ISP's (such as Demon) do not see advertising ebay auctions as actionable abuse, and it may become necessary for the surviving groups to go to a script-based moderation--allow known users to post, and hold other posts until viewed.
hawk
That's a very important point as regards UK law etc. As UK citizens we enjoy very few 'rights' as enjoyed by such places at the USA who have a specific constitution guaranteeing them such things. UK law is based almost entirely on precedent and any rights we have are there because centuries of precedent have allowed them to exist.
This means we can do anything until someone in law decides we can't (equally something that's deemed unlawful can become a 'right' if it's defeated in a court)
Strangely, our lack of rights does tend to a more open society than in the US where the strict lists of rights gives people a detailed list of what you can and can't do. Here we have to wait for something to be decided in court and it's often easier to just let things lie.........
Hohum
Troc
Troc's dubious podcast and blog: http://www.trocnet.net
If there were any justice in the system (which there isn't), someone would now be able to take Laurence Godfrey to court for destruction of freedom of speech on the Internet in the UK. Preferably it should be Demon, so they get their 400,000 UKP back, and the judgement ought to disallow LG from any further use of the medium which his actions destroyed.
But the UK courts have no interest in freedom of speech, being basically a playground for the power politics of government, corporates and pressure groups. Too bad.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Still, also Demon had this supposedly illegal post on their servers. As well as many other ISPs and users, I guess. So should the complaining person go around and ask EVERY ISP, not only Demon, to remove the post? At the time of spreading the article, probably non of the ISPs actually knew they were doing so. Any legal action has to be taken on a specific instance of a post on a specific storage medium. Is there any legal obligation for Demon to inform other ISPs that they might have this illegal post coming through Demons servers?
If this does set a precedent, and ISP's do have to start monitoring traffic, we can all say goodbye to the free ISP's. It's extremely unlikely that they could afford the extra infrastructure to cope with this demand without passing that cost onto the end-user. Not that that's a bad thing, cos most of 'em suck ;)
Now weary traveller, rest your head. For just like me, you're utterly dead.
This guy is well known for, er, um, well Demon are my ISP too, so let's just say he's well known in UK internet circles ;)
\a
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"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
"OK, to start with, we all understand basic IP, right ?" [blank looks all round] "You know, TCP, UDP, ports, dotted quads ... uh .... "
\a
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"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
\a
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"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
Most of the bandwidth of this group is generated by various cross-posting ASSHOLES beating the drum of their causes in a group that doesn't give a shit.
.kill file in several years, but at one time one could filter out nearly all of the noise in any number of clever ways. Making this feature available in a user-friendly (read: GUI I suppsoe) fashion for an average USENET app shouldn't be all that difficult.
As I mentioned in another post, we should be seeking technical solutions to these problems. This is an excellent example.
It shouldn't be too hard to design or configure a news reader to automagically filter articles that are crossposted to more than one newsgroup, irrespective of content. I haven't hacked a
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
More like:
-£400,000 Libel
Photos of bits of the past hiding in the present: afiler.com
Normally i'm all for pointing out the use of 'UK' over 'England' to our American cousins, however this looks like a valid case for using 'England'...
All the ISP needed to do was to TRY. This means issuing a message to have the file erased.
Would it work? Hell no.. Most servers ignore that now as it's far to easy to fake.
Thats why they never bothered.
It IS dumb on one side to think an ISP can do anything about a message once it is out.
But legally speaking they need to try...
Say like... THE DVDCCS guys saying "We have to say this for legal reasons... please erase our code becouse the DVDCCA dosn't want you to have it... thank you"
But it's not that they legally must monitor everything just that they legaly must push the big red button connected to nothing.
It's silly... but it's nothing major.. just legally required to try..
I don't actually exist.
ms
Try this or maybe this.
Some newsgroups definatley have trouble (I haven't read rec.humor for over ten years, probably longer!!).
/. user should be reading), gaming newsgroups, and many other things - these all are still pretty readable. I don't even use killfiles at the moment.
But for many other topics, newsgroups (even outside comp.*) are still a great source of information and the S/N ratio is still good. Photography groups, moderated newsgroups (like comp.risks, which every
The web is great if something you want to know has already been expounded upon elsewhere. But when you have some new question that is not easily answered through a search engine, newsgroups are a good place to ask the universe at large.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"It wasn't a flame, it was a lie. There's a million miles between the two."
.|` Clouds cross the black moonlight,
Yup, I've since read up on and remembered a bit more about the case, and the idea of forging a posting... well amongst other things, *sign the post*!. As well as complain to the ISP for breach of usenettiquette if it persists.
"Freedom of speech is not freedom to malign and impugn."
Actually I think that's wrong. Freedom of speech is to say whatever you like - the *responsibility* for it is a separate idea that I wouldn't deny. (This is one of the reasons I don't flame as much as I'd like!)
"Demon didn't even try, that's where they went wrong. They didn't even look into the problem and say "we don't have an issue with this", they just ignored it."
Indeedie, that's a bad thing.
However, I stand by my point - I don't want legislation on the 'Net at all. Governments that don't know anything about the Internet and its operation should not be making decisions about what they can/can't do with the Net, let alone what ISPs should/shouldn't do. This is why I'd quite like a 'data safehaven island' (as in Cryptonomicon).
~Tim
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~Tim
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Rushing on down to the circle of the turn
I think you're missing the point (IANAL) the ISP is involved when the existance of (potentially) defamatory material on their servers is brought to their attention. Just because it's the Internet doesn't mean the medium is exempt from the laws of the country the server is hosted in.
This ruling (as I understand it) does not mean that ISPs in the UK will be required to monitor their spool, however they will have to act when informed of illegal/defamatory material. Rather than just ignoring the problem.
-- The Flying Hamster
Slashdot has carried a number of stories recently where similar pressure was brought to bear in the US.
The issue then was not defamation, but the end-result went the same way. Some legal department (or the FBI) pressures an ISP to remove something they host, the ISP has the choice of fighting it for no reward or simply pulling the plug on a site. Demon fought and lost, the US ISPs in the stories we read here simply pulled the plug.
There are also parallels here with the case in Bavaria/Germany where Felix Somm of Compuserve actually received a suspended prison sentence (if my memory serves me right) before winning the appeal. Compuserve had been held responsible for pornographic content that came in over the web.
On a totally different level, Justice Morland was the judge in *this* case. He has afaik a history of interesting rulings, rulings not necessarily backed by the evidence. I hope Demon have better luck in the appeal.
Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
There is a story that Berwick is still at war, as it was included at the start of the Crimean war, but excluded at the end. Dunno how acurate this is though.
If you're talking about "privacy" - I would be careful.
:-)
In the UK we have a "Data Protection Act" and a "Data Protection Registrar" who do a heck of a lot to protect people's individual privacy. The system may not be perfect - but it has real teeth and it works. Doubleclick would simply not be allowed to do in the UK what they recently tried to do in the US.
In the USA I believe you have what is known as "Self regulation" when it comes to privacy. Viewed from here it would appear that it doesn't have any teeth and it doesn't work. Companies can do whatever they like to individuals data - until they do something so outrageous it has political consequences.
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Oh! And anyone who hasn't tried decent "warm" beer should give it a go. The reason we don't drink our (decent) Beer cold is because it actually tastes of something nice, unlike Beer which has to be served ice-cold to hide the god-awful taste.
But be warned. Many English pubs now serve Beer which isn't fit to drink warm OR cold. So if you want to try some decent stuff ask a local first!
AJB
It's pretty obvious that there is NOT a way for ISP's to police the contect of the traffic that leaves their networks. That's just silly. However, this does not seem to be what went on here. /.-type forum when it comes to this. If somebody posts something that is libelous and the maintainers of the forum are informed of this, I'd say that it IS their responsibility to remove the offending message.
What went on here was that someone posted a libelous message up to a newsserver run by an ISP. The ISP was informed of this and did not TRY to remove the message from their system. They refused to do so. If they had TRIED to cancel the message (yes, some news servers don't honor cancels) and had removed it from their own server, I cannot see how they could be held accountable for it.
I do not see much of a difference between running a newspaper with classifieds and a news server or
This does NOT mean that ISPs should need to monitor what goes in and out of the system. What this DOES mean is that they need to be responsive to complaints, just as any newspaper would be.
Now... As far as what country's laws to use when it comes to matters like that, I have no idea. The most logical solution would seem to be the country that the forum is hosted in, but this obviously does not work well for forums like usenet that does not have a single central location. I realize all of the above argument is pretty useless without a clear definition as to what SHOULD be illegal to publish, but this seems to make the most sense.
Please note that I am not making any sort of judgement of what I think of libel and slander laws. I DO believe it is possible to use words to harm another, however, so... you figure it out for yourself.
IANAL, especially not a UK sollicitor, but I don't think you can be sent to gaol for libel. It is a civil tort, and only carries civil penalties.
...
You could lose your house, but maybe not if you've incorporated into a limited liability company. Or if it's in your wife's name before the tort. Of course, that may have other liabilities
UK style libel has long been far far worse than US style libel: it has
long been an excellent strategy for politicians and the wealthy to sue
newspapers for true accusations, a strategy that rarely backfires.
Free speech is very badly protected in the UK.
IMO, continental Europe tends to take matters of privacy far more seriously
than either UK or US, and matters of free speech as seriously as the
US. Don't let the UK's bad law misguide you as to the state of the
law in the rest of Europe.
a) Its not a ruling, according to the article. Demon -settled-.
b) This -may- affect Wales, but we Scots have our own legal system, so it doesnt -necessarily- affect us up here.
c) Can I use Slashdot to call Godfrey a greedy, grasping tosspot or not? Just as a theoretical question, y'know...
free experimental electronic music netlabel at www.viablehybrid.com
Every English ISP could just drop nntp -- I'd even block the NNTP ports going out so that you couldn't even go to an NNTP server overseas unless it was on an odd port. Just to make a point.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Comparing this ISP to a newspaper isn't the best analogy, because a newspaper has editors who review and are responsible for the content of their newspaper. They are publishers.
A better analogy is to compare the ISP to a newsstand. They distribute content, but they do not review or edit any of it. They are merely distributors. Can a newssstand be sued for libel if they distribute a newspaper containing libelous information?
These apply to US law, but they do a good job of explaining libel, trade libel, slander and defamation, particularly with respect to the Internet and ISPs:
Of course that brings up an interesting question. Is Slashdot a publisher or a distributor? Does moderation constitue editorial control? By Slashdot, or by individual moderators? I'm so confused....
Even if Laurence Godfrey wanted to sue for damages caused against him, shouldn't he be pursing the poster of the material and not the medium? In most cases that I've seen, the plaintiff would normally pursue restitution from the defamer and not from the media that broadcasted it on television or published in the press.
Filtering of information posted on the Internet by ISPs is also open to abuse. Imagine if a media conglomerate owning an ISP decides to start filtering out posted opinions contrary to those held by the corporation? This would cause an outrage in most Western democracies.
Being an Australian, we are about to suffer from the restrictive online policies instituted by the right wing John Howard and Richard Alston. This will possibly have a devastating impact on our already slow internet speeds (due to our geographic location to the rest of the world) and hamper the development of e-commerce as ISPs will be forced to screen all incoming data for pornographic and criminal data. Britain may also see a slow in the growth if they force their ISPs to screen their Internet traffic too for defamatory postings.
But getting back to the point of online democracy being threatened in Europe, this sets a disturbing trend as less and less people will be unable to post their opinions and criticisms without fear of being clamped down upon by an authoritarian judicial system. The best weapon to combat defamatory or racist, sexist or offensive sites on the net is information itself and raising awareness so the public can make their own minds up on what is the truth.
Governments cannot claim to be morally right and democratic on one hand, and hypocritically crush the right of to make criticisms (whether anonymous or openly)with the other. Europeans must draw the line now.
-- "I can't tell the future, I just work there." -- The Doctor
In england it doesn't just stop with ISP being responcible for usenet. Douglas Adams (Of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy fame) found himself in a spot because a christmas book he wrote. It seems that The Church of England can take you to court for Blastphamy.
The long and the short of it the law on the books was pretty clear cut. The book was pulled from circulation. He talked a bit about this at a book signing in the states in the early 90's.
The point here is that demon were told that there was defamatory material and refused to take it down. I say screw them.
take a triptonica to subthunk
Say I set up a shell script to mail a
notification for every single usenet article.
What's a news admin to do?
If it's reasonable to respond to one complaint,
but unreasonable to respond to all, where's
the line?
It's not really the slander and libel laws that are in question here. The problem is who is responsible. Should ISPs be held liable for things that are posted through them?
kwsNI
Dammit, how can I sue them if they are good and offer Linux support? Now flame me again with a different ISP. Doesn't anyone use UKOL?
kwsNI
Shouldn't this guy have gone after the people that were slandering him rather than the ISP that it was posted to? Or did he go after both?
kwsNI
Hey, sorry people. Guess my sarcasm went over some heads. The UKOL comment was supposed to refer to whatever big internet service that you wanted to think about for the UK. It had nothing to do with AOL, BMW or any other specific company.
kwsNI
born in London, England, 1944
TomV
What is correct is that only Scotland got a "Parliament", Wales got an Assembly. The difference seems small, but is very telling...
;-)
Wales got an Assembly because it is a nation, but its powers are weak in case it acts like one. The Act of Union 1536 was an act of annexation, an attempt "to utterly extirp" the customs of Wales, to wipe out the language and the customs - in effect the first colony of the British Empire. Fortunately it has failed.
Scotland's Act of Union was passed by their own parliament (through corruption IIRC) and so they kept some of their independent bodies (i.e. legal system etc). Part of their Act was that the names "England" and "Scotland" would cease to be used and they would be known as "Britain" - however that agreement was soon broken. Hence the creation of a "Parliament" there to reflect the "different" status.
The first elections were thought to lend themselves to a more shock result in Scotland but it was Wales that gave the ruling Labour Party a bloody nose where Plaid Cymru (Lit: "Party of Wales", a political party espousing self-governance for Wales) came through with shock breakthroughs in traditional Labour Strongholds.
Britain itself comes from the Celtic name which survives in Welsh as Prydain - mutates (Celtic languages mutate their form in certain circumstances) to Brydain - given that the "d" is pronounced fairly similarly to a "t" it corrupted to Britain.
Re: English Parliament. Since Westminster still holds sovereign over the Assembly, giving England a legislative Parliament would create a democratic deficit in Wales - hence the increasing view of people is that some sort of federal system will be in place in the UK within 25 years. The view is that as Wales and Scotland evolve their systems to self-government then the regions of England will gain legislative regional Assemblys and England itself will become federal. This is a very desirable system - in that as Wales and Scotland have become focal points for constitutional change in the UK England is being left behind.
THe UK is decentralising slowly - finally joining the 20th Century! Hence it is only fair that all of the nations of the UK share in this.
England's historic regions have a lot of cultural differences. Indeed some are seperate Celtic countries in their own right (Cornwall : Kernow in their own language), while others such as Lancshire and Yorkshire have different needs and foci then for example, Kent or Wiltshire. Cumbria for example had its own celtic dialect.
The most cheering fact of this silent revolution in the UK is that we are learning to live with our cultural differences in a peacable fashion. Wales and Scotland are growing up, and I sincerely hope that the old rivalries will be forgotten as we enter this century as friends bonded together by choice.
The hope is that either the "Council of the Isles" (a body of representatives of the Wales/Scotland/Westminster/N Ireland/ Ireland/ IOM etc etc) or the House of Lords becomes the "federal parliament" and that the other bodies send representatives to them. As Europe evolves such a system would see all parts of the UK sending direct representatives to the EU, as opposed to now where the UK government makes decisions for Wales/Scotland etc in proxy.
The main difference is that the Assembly has no fiscal or primary legislative power - it can only amend existing legislation without being unable to create new laws.
The upshot though is that treating "England & Wales" as one entity will become increasingly inaccurate. Hence issues like this become of interest to us in Wales as we see the opportunities to make our own law. Already the moves towards a "Welsh" legal system are starting.
If you haven't already guessed, I support Wales having full self-government
...Upgrade now to Schrodingers Dog...
OK, so I may be a very small fish. I'm a one-man-band (and his cat!) but I do provide free services to people - one of which is discussion forums and places for free-speech. But I will not in any way, shape or form, censor people from expressing their opinions. So it all comes down to money. If people want to sue me, then it looks like I could be off to jail for a spell. Ho Hum! At least I can count on the sensible people of the world to shout out about the injustice. Can't I? Err.. Hello? Anybody there? Dragon
that a person has to give the ISP notice that the demamatory material is on their site and the ISP has to refuse to remove it before the ISP can be held liable. This law isn't too burdensome. The internet provides people with a way to commit libel much easier than they ever could before and there needs to be some mechanism of accountability. This law requires ISP's to take reasonable steps to prevent libel, and then after doing so, should some be posted, remove it after notification. That isn't too much to ask.
Thus the situation where , say, WHSmiths (large chain of newsagents) regularly used to refuse to carry Private Eye (satirical magazine) when their covers featured people such as Robert Maxwell who were known to be fond of the courts.
I seem to have posted five times on one story ... soprry, everyone, it must have been something I ate ;)
--
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
There has long been a debate in the UK surrounding whether ISP's should be given common carrier status (such as the Royal Mail have) whereby they are not held responsible for information transmitted over their networks.
It seems at first glance that they certainly should. But at what point does that end? We can all agree that to employ people to read and make a value judgment on every piece of information sent over a network would be ridiculous. Similarly, checking a bulletin board the size of (say) Slashdot would also be a mammoth undertaking.
What about the situation of when requested to remove personal attacks against a person though, from a news server or bulletin board hosted on that particular ISP's servers?
Where to draw the line becomes a sticky problem.
The situation in the UK is further complicated by the fact that according to existing laws suurrounding censorship and libel, the "publisher" of traditional paper material can be any of; the publisher, the writer, distributors and/or stockists! This leads to a horrible situation, where a shop is responsible for the content of books that it stocks - which has lead to several raids in the UK against comic shops stocking "adult" comics.
I get the impression that this latest news does still not set a precedent saying that UK ISP's should be responsible for all the content on their servers, but rather that if asked to remove material that could prove libellous in court, they should probably try and comply. Not the best ruling, I'll agree, but not a total disaster either.
A little planning goes a long way...
I disagree. There are some fantastic newsgroups. I used to be into the band Ween and their ng is great (alt.music.ween), but probably lame if you're not into Ween.
On alt.comp.perifs.cdr I have troubleshot my CDR VERY WELL.
The Mozilla newsgroups (news.mozilla.org -- netscape.public.mozilla.*) have let me really follow and contribute to the next Netscape browser.
The "ER" newsgroup is cool when I miss an episode...people post summaries and such.
To say nothing of the ever-popular porn newsgroups, where one can find one's own particular "thing" and find lots of people who are also into that thing--including pictures, videos, reviews, original works, etc.
Usenet is FAR from dead. I find it invaluable. And, unlike the web, it has yet to be "discovered"--no ecommerce, no suburban values, no emphasis on looking good, not easy to set up (well, pretty damn easy, but not for total "dummies").
The open-forum nature of the system is what makes it work. The distributed nature is what makes people think hosts should be held accountable. I, for one, would shed a tear at its passing.
Warning: this posting will reach no conclusion. Read it at your own risk. :-)
My first reaction to this was ``this is bullshit'', quite frankly. I have worked at ISPs for a couple years now, and have been a user of Usenet for almost seven years (although I've waned somewhat recently). My first reaction is that it's patently ridiculous to sue Demon over this. They should be under no obligation to remove any material. Usenet should always be taken with a grain of salt, anyway; and if Dr. Godfrey is so hot about forgeries, he should sign all his messages with PGP.
But then again, I think that someone must take some sort of action. Let's face it, digital signature technology is never going to take hold (considering even IPv6 is stalemated like crazy over here in the US), and unless we wipe the current Internet technology from the face of Earth and start anew, we'll never have assurances that forgeries are in the very least rare. Regrettably, the herd is full of people who don't have a clue that messages even can be forged, and they'll believe anything they see coming up on their screen. I doubt we could educate them about forgeries considering the fact that I see a new mass-forward-to-get-free-stuff spam every other week.
Something else I'm worrying about, which is close to OT, is that even if we did deploy mandatory digital signatures for everyone, the majority of the Internet herd would never be able to comprehend it and insecure PCs would be compromising keys left and right -- so it would be, in a word, ineffectual.
Where does this all leave us? I'm not really sure. It concerns me to see precedent like this, especially considering the hordes of bloodthirsty lawyers over here in the US grinning with glee at the idea of such a case.
The Internet has indeed blessed us with a glimpse of what free speech truly is. Unfortunately, as our audience grows wider, it seems to get less free.
LogiTech Inc. is being held liable for developing the mouse that allowed the recent attacks on popular e-commerce sites such as Yahoo! and E-bay. The DA says "Without the mouse, the attacks couldn't have happened, we need to send a message to these companies that they cannot allow such dangerous tools to be open to the public".
Seriously folks, how can an ISP be responsible for what it's users do? How can a fast-food place be respobible for somebody spilling coffee on themselves? How can tobacco companies be responsible for somebody smoking 20+ years? What we need today is personal responsibility.
Until people stop crying to other people (esp. the government) how can we have a free socity? With freedom comes responsibility. It seems we want one without the other, but, that's impossible.
And, more spcifically on this ruling, woln't this just incourage more people to post "illegal" (don't get me started...) things? If the ISP get punished and not the person, why not?
Grades, Social Life, Sleep....Pick Two.
--Justin Mitchell
"2nd Place is a fancy word for losing" --Bender (Futurama)
I can see MSFT making a shitload of cash off this... all they have to do is scan slashdot over the past 2 years for "Microsoft" and they have like 321412341 automatic cases :) (Not to mention searching on Google for +"Bill Gates" +satan)
Wow ... I like the fact that I can call someone a wanker at any point in time I feel like it. I guess maybe I should take that for granted. Though we all know England really can't do much of anything right. I mean they even mess up the english language. Let's face it. English people like tea and whining. And I guess whining gets you a half a million dollars because someone typed something that hurt your feelings.
Wow, you're not too much of a bigot are you? I mean this bloke is already known on USENET as being very quick with the threat of legal action, and yet you seem to think that he obviously represents all of English people. And as for winning money for this, the US is by far the worse for frivolous lawsuits. I mean lets face it, a country with 50% of the world's lawyers can't really talk about people suing for quick money.
But flaming someone ... come on ... you've obviously never driven in a big city in America if you really think something someone types will upset you. I mean you get a bit to close to someone and BOOM you just became lower than dirt. Also there's that whole fact that americans like to put down and flame peole. It's the american way.
Oh, so having a go at someone is obviously an American invention? Have you been watching Mary Poppins too much and started believing it is a genuine depiction of the UK? From the sounds of it you've never been to England and don't have much of a clue about how people *actually* live. And you sound proud about a country where people think it's a high point to go on TV and insult other people. Very clever.
A 1996 law explicitly allowed British ISPs to invoke an "innocent dissemination" defense in cases of libel, but the recent ruling struck down this provision.
s /story/18764.html?wnpg=all p l/pr/1999/pr1999-03-26a.html
.oO0Oo.
Laurence Godfrey, has filed 10 lawsuits in a personal crusade to try to force the Internet to submit to national libel laws. In this suit, he objected to a forged posting on the newsgroup soc.culture.thai that he claimed was libelous; the poster has no relationship whatsoever with Demon Internet, the defendant.
The decision may point to a broader trend across Europe. A draft European Commission directive on electronic commerce suggests that ISPs should be liable for similar kinds of content if they are aware of its presence.
Here is Demon Internet's spin on the story.
http://www.wired.com/news/print_version/politic
http://www.dispatches.demon.net/cgi-bin/framer.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
I flame you, son of an English Pig Dog. Now go away before I taunt you a second time, you silly English kn-ig-ht. Your father was a hampster and your mother smelt of elderberries.
I don't think you mean it that way around. British libel law is generally agreed to be the worst in the West. Many journalists knew very well what press baron Robert Maxwell was up to with stealing pension funds, but they couldn't afford the libel case that would inevitably follow if they were to publish it, so millions were embezzled in safety until Maxwell's fortunate death. However a dead man can't be defamed, so as soon as he was dead the whole details could be published and were quickly found to be entirely true.
It's been a mainstay of villains and scoundrels for many years. Recently it's not all been going the way of the bad guys: Jonathan Aitken and Neil Hamilton were recent prominent losers in libel cases and Aitken deservedly went to prison for perjury after suing a paper for publishing the truth.
--
Xenu loves you!
In that case, I'd guess you don't know very much about Usenet.
Settling with this guy (who has sued others before, I believe), not only panders to net.kookery, but fails to recognize the decentralized nature of Usenet.
To order an ISP to remove a Usenet post is silly; yes, they can issue a cancel, but a lot of good that does for an article that has already propagated. Many servers do not honor cancels, for a number of reasons, so the article, while it may not be available on the local server, will still exist on servers throughout the world (He did manage to get DejaNews to pull it, though...another scary thing).
Usenet is really a record of events; what this guy has done is to try to alter history by scribbling in his own newspaper.
New XFMail home page
/bin/tcsh: Try it; you'll like it.
The whole premise surrounding the case is flawed, because it makes Demon special in some way when they're not, they merely reflect the state of the Usenet flood-fill.
Somebody posted an article allegedly libelling Laurence Godfrey, and regardless of through which ISP and in which country it was posted, IT WAS INJECTED STRAIGHT INTO USENET by the poster, so only the poster can in any way be responsible. Demon and every other ISP merely reflect the state of the global flood-fill, while providing the means by which posters can themselves inject their posts into the global system. Furthermore, any optimizations related to local injection prior to distribution are just that, optimizations: they don't change the model.
Demon was merely a postpoint, nothing else. They did not hold the articles in question except as a reflection of the global Usenet, so it was pointless of Godfrey to ask Demon to remove them from their own servers alone because the articles were on Usenet, not on Demon servers per se. And to have the articles cancelled across Usenet does not require any particular ISP's involvement (you can use any ISP), so Demon were not in any way specially involved even if the items were originally injected via Demon.
The whole premise of the action and of the defense was wrong, and Demon should have been advised accordingly.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
So, ironically, USENET as an archive of information is much more useful than the web IMHO, despite the fact that as a forum it is being murdered by the spammers and trollers.
Unfortunately, if USENT truly does die as you and others predict, some ugly consiquences will emerge:
It is in all of our interests to keep USENET alive. If the signal to noise ratio has grown so bad that it is difficult to use, and moderation is unacceptable, perhaps some kind of slashdot-style rating of posts, or other tweak is necessary. I believe it would be a mistake to simply dismiss what is still, even today, a valuable resource and simply allow it to die.
Unless, of course, none of us want to be able to quickly look up answers to our questions anymore on deja.com, or to post an opinion safely and anonymously that might otherwise be supressed (and no, I don't thing slashdots anonymouty is secure enough to use for anything other than the most casual purposes).
Instead of throwing our hands up and shrugging, we should be looking for solutions to the signal to noise problem which preseves USENETs overall strengths of decentralized authority, resistence to censorship, and anonymouty.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Every word you have posted is a lie. You are a Microsoft user. You are a clueless newbie who has have never even written a device driver. I recieve six death threats off you every half hour. Furthermore, you are the originator of those emails which say Bill Gates will buy a trip to Disneyland for every recipient.
On an unrelated note, I use FreeUK. They are an excellent free ISP who give free telephone and email support. They will go out of their way to support non-standard setups, like Linux, and I would heartily reccommend them to anyone.
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
1. dedicate enough skilled staff to review each and every such demand, and judge whether it is justified (keeping in mind that a wrong decision could be very costly), or
2. immediately cave in and remove any posting on demand (this will also require staff effort, but requires less skill). This would, of course, reduce the level of discourse to that of a corporate press release.
What with this and Labour's Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill (putting encryption users at risk of prosecution if they lose their keys), Britain looks to be dropping out of the Internet race. Sad, really.
Please please please could we make the distinction between the UK and England here. this ruling affects the UK so go England is hardly appropriate, I'm sure the poster knows the difference betweent the UK and England but a lot of idnorant people read these articles
--
you have just proved that sig ads work! Email me for a written quotation.
I remember this asshole. What a jerk!
:-(
He was even a net-legend.
I guess a legend with a lawyer can set an unfortunate precedent...
Regards,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
So should an ISP delete anything that anyone tells them is defamatory ? Or the police ? the Government ? a customer ? Anyone who looks like they can afford to sue ?
--
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
> not only panders to net.kookery, but fails to recognize the decentralized nature of Usenet.
That may or may not be true.
The decentralized nature if Usenet causes obvious problems with certain legal jurisdictions. But the law always seems to be determined to "have a go" - even when it is pointless. It is not impossible to imagine how someone might try to take advantage of this.
>To order an ISP to remove a Usenet post is silly; yes, they can issue a cancel,
Demon refused to even try. When the dubious posts were reported they could have chosen to look remove them from their own servers and possibly issue cancels. Had they done so they would then have been able to make a strong case that they had done everything possible - and that would probably have got them off the hook, even if there attempts had only had very limited success.
There are a couple of important facts which I think people should be aware of - along with some important points about UK law and practice.
1) The case was settled before it went to court.
2) Up until that point Demon had a defence - the details of which made interesting reading and are relevant. Unfortunately the Demon press release on this seems to have been withdrawn. Hmmm. Anyway - working from memory, the defence was based on drawing attention to some of the other messages Godfrey has posted on Usenet, some of the other legal cases he had been involved with. I think they were suggesting that when looked at in context then people might be able to draw some very different conclusions about what was really going on.
3) Under English law there is a general prinicple that the loosing side of a legal action plays the costs of everyone involved. Normally these costs are "taxed". This is nothing to do with raising money for the government. "Taxing" is a way of the court ruling on what charges are fair. However Libel cases are different - the costs are not "taxed" and the lawyers on both sides can charge pretty much what they want and the losing side is stuck with paying the (huge) bill.
4) Legal costs in England are very high generally - and the most expensive area is libel law.
5) It is common practice for one side to make an offer prior to a hearing starting. If that offer is accepted then the party that made it pays whatever they offered - usually plus all the legal bills so far.
6) If the offer is refused and the court finally awards an amount which is equal too, or less than the amount offered, then the party which refused the offer is normally made to pay the costs from that point onwards.
7) In this case the settlement offered was fifteen thousand pounds + costs. This could be regarded as quite a low figure for libels in the UK. Costs are about two hundred thousand pounds.
8) Had the case gone to trial total costs could easily have reached a million pounds and beyond.
OK. Based on the above - here is one scenario which fits the known facts quite well :
Demon thought they had a good defence, but also knew it was a "high-risk" defence. One likely outcome of fielding that defence could have been that the court would still have found against Demon - but only made a very modest award of damages. Had that happened Demon would still have been lumbered with paying huge costs.
So Demon took a pragmatic view that they would make a modest offer to protect themselves from such an outcome.
When Godfrey saw the offer he was then faced with a decision. If he refused the offer there was a chance that the amount he finally won in court would have been less than Demon's offer - and he would been left to page the huge litigation costs.
Given the risks involved he might have decided that his best interests lay in accepting the offer.
It was basically a gamble for both sides.
In making the offer Demon were paying out a quarter of a million pounds to reduce the odds of them being stung for well over a million.
In accepting the offer Godfrey was taking only fifteen thousand pounds and avoiding having an having to pay very substantial legal costs even if he only won modest damages.
AJB
knew they were unlikely to win on a matter of principle, trying to
protect their users freedom of speech. How many other ISPs do you
think would do the same?
And they have been very open about what they are doing and why. If
I was in the UK, I would switch to Demon: I trust people who are
open. All the other UK based ISPs will be following just the same
conservative policy, except they won't be telling you what they are
doing and why.
Consider the following, now that the EU is moving toward integrated laws and "e-commerce" regulations:
Ladies and gentlemen, I am afraid this will push the EU to enact Union-wide laws. Why is this a bad news? Because most Europeans are not informed enough (yet) about the potential and pitfalls of Internet free speech. And, because of the weight of the EU, what it decides may well affect other countries... Such as the US. Uh Oh.
Not to mention that most Euro-MPs are complete idiots (IMHO).
Not Good. Or, as a famous Englishman would have put it: "Double-Plus UnGood". We are getting there -- we are just behind schedule...
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
See this on Demon's web site for some intresting background on the case.
So, would all of you people reading this from England please flame this post and also leave me your ISP so that I can sue them? I'll split any profits :)
kwsNI