Slashdot Mirror
Australian Spammer Sues Back
Vilorman writes: "We've all heard the one about the spammers begin sued. Now, an Ausie spammer is suing back, for being blacklisted. Claiming damages and equipment replacement costs and so on. The whole article is over at Yahoo. So, I guess now, not only are we subjected to the spam, but we can't block it either?"
how the heck does replacing equipment that factor in? I can understand where they're coming from in terms of damages, but replacing equipment? Isnt it just a configuration flag or something in the mail relay?
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
...A robber once successfully sued a homeowner because he fell out of a window and broke his leg while escaping after a heist.
This is bullshit. Spam is theft. Spammers steal the use of bandwidth, machine use, and disk space from ISPs and users. Any court who even thinks twice about letting this go to trial will be so caught up in legal technicalities that it won't hear *any* trial fairly.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
The article, and quotes in the article, both call the case a "first".
Didn't ORBS get sued?
I do not care if you have a business, there are too many ways for you to advertise already, you do not have to require the entire world to listen to your sales pitch.
The RBL and similar are volunteer organizations, there is no requirement for them to be used by anyone or any company. This is not even an issue because people are only securing their own networks from overloaded mail traffic. If this gentleman wants to solicit, it would be better to start a page for the company and then go looking for handshakes to put his banner on other pages, if he uses that, then people expect to get ads. Forcing his way into your personal mailbox is not a right in any country that I'm aware of.
DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
UNIX - Not just for Vestal Virgins anymore
An IT professional whose lifeblood depends on amassing lists of valid e-mail addresses?
That makes you, what? A spammer? Or a marketer?
It doesn't make you a "professional," in my book.
Specialization is for insects. - R.A.H.
I'm always telling my employer that if he isn't carefull we will get blacklisted, sense we are ridding a "grey line" with our mailings. I'm just waiting for the day I can tell him "I told you so". Now that he purchased an email farming program I be that day will come sooner than later.
Why I love spam
Damn, I think I'd punch that guy in the face.
A message from the system administrator: 'I've upped my priority. Now up yours.'
I'm usually an extreme free speech advocate. I've even been known to argue for the right to yell fire in a crowded theater. That said, free speech gives you the right to speak, not the right to force someone to hear you, and certainly not the right to force someone else to bear the cost of publication. The newspaper editor doesn't have to pay to publish your letter, Rob Malda and andover.net don't have to pay to let you post your comment, and I don't have to pay to download your spam. And free speech also means the other guy has a right to say, "Don't listen to this guy; he's a knucklehead." (or "don't accept IP traffic from this host, it's a spammer")
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
Yeah, if you can get sued just for claiming that a well-known spammer is spammer, this will be a blockbuster in courthouses over the world...
I can already see the next generation of spam... "Make $$$$$$$$ free!!!! Sue anti-spammers!!!! "
Oh, I can't help quoting you because everything that you said rings true
If that estimate they gave for "loss of income" for 20 days is justifiable (which of course, it may not be), it is likely that SPAM is NEVER going away.
Not if you can recur the cost for a good SPAM server w/in the first week of operations.
However, those numbers are probably bloated, and this is all speculation. But still, the fact that they can *still* make money off of SPAM indicates a greater problem than just the inconvenience of unwanted mail in your mailbox. It means lots of people are paying attention, and spending money, and supporting the whole system.
$7,907 (AU$14,000) for replacing blocked or compromised IP numbers, $2,683 (AU$4,750) for labor costs of technicians to establish an alternative e-mail system, $2,824 (AU$5,000) to purchase a new server computer and $11,296 (AU$20,000) for loss of income it claims to have incurred over a 20-day waiting period
hmm last I knew it didn't cost $8k to get a new ip?!?! technicians?!? for what changing an ip on a server, nevermind about buying a new server, and if their isp takes 20 days to issue a new ip, they should be sueing their isp! I've worked at a company that got blackballed for relaying mail way back when spammers just started bouncing mail around, once we discovered the problem it was literally, turn off relaying - 5 minutes(max), get new ip from isp - one phone call (about 10 minutes), reassign ip and reboot server - 10 minutes. This is a ton of horsecrap, nevermind the fact that they're stealling people's bandwidth for sending unsolicited unwanted e-mail, I pay for it and get your crap off of it!!
Good things never end "eum" they end in "MANIA" or "teria"
The official web site of the defence is at http://t3-v-mcnicol.ilaw.com.au/ (Mirror). There are also plans to set up a defence fund.
Now, this is a case that happened in the US instead of Austrailia, so it may not be able to be cited in this particular law suit, but it shows that courts do not feel that spammer have a God-given right to send their mail to anyone and everyone they want to.
- Sam
The secret to enjoying Slashdot is to realize that it should not be taken too seriously.
A programmer with $8 000 monthly salary killed a spammer, resulting in a 50 year penalty.
;)
Penalized programmer seeks compensation for $4 800 000 lost income (programmer has so vague understanding of money, that he forgets that this does not represent the correct value after 50 years
So, how actually does this differ from this spammer's case?
If they're losing ~$10,000USD in 20 days, can they even afford the legal fees for long? Is it worth it for them, if they are that low profit, to invest thousands and thousands of dollars into lawyers for a court battle?
/.ers...we could each send them a dollar to recoup their 'losses'.... just make sure you write something nasty about spammers on the bill.
;-)
Think about it all you American
Or we could send the bill to the guy being sued to use in his defense...we'd bury T3 Direct's legal fund in a day
Or...I could buy a soda. Mmmm...caffeine...
http://thechubbyferret.net - Ferret pictures and informative links.
The death penalty is cruel and unusual punishment for the victim. If spammers are put to sleep, we will see no justice.
Why don't we lock the convicted spammers in a padded room with a television set to display an endless stream of infomercials, commercials, and religious programming with no way to turn it off? Better yet, we can have a pay-per-view 24/7 webcam focused on the spammer shackled to the wall that is subjected to this treatment. The webcam page can have pushbutton forms to impliment things such as water-drip torchure, the pneumatic ram punching glove hit him in the stomach gag, release one starved and abused lab rat, and other inventive buttons...
I think spammers should be kept alive for humanitarian reasons such as these. They would benefit the world with stress research and the mentioned entertainment possibilities.
First of all, it's presumed innocent, not innocent. Second, the concept of innocence has no place in a civil trial. The decision is based upon the preponderance (50.1%) of the evidence. IANAL, but I took a business law class.
Ok, find the email address of the Judge and of his staff and get it on every spamlist you know of. Ditto once we know who the jurors are.
OK, even assuming the latter were possible, it is extremely rare in Australia for a civil trial to involve a jury - usually the parties are content to have it decided by a judge sitting alone
What kind of precident will it set if he wins? Well, very simply, it will open the doors for DDoS kiddies to get away with thier attacks quite legally (in Austrailia at least) simply by making sure each ping packet that goes out contains an ad for a get rich quick scheme... This is some bad, bad stuff.
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
Too bad you didn't bother to read the SPEWS site - if you did you would know they don't sensor anything. I quote (emphasis added):
"We do not control the network traffic on anyone else's servers; therefore, we are not the ones rejecting your email, the mailserver you attempted to send email to generated the bounce. We simply provide a public list of ranges of Internet space (IP addresses) which we do not wish to exchange traffic with. Other networks may choose to filter traffic on their systems using our list. SPEWS never touches any email (or other data packets) between your network and someone else's network. Any email bouncing or packet blocking that takes place occurs at the receiving system."
That is like me saying "I don't like to talk to Bill Gates", and someone thinks my opinion on who I like to talk to matters a whole lot, so they decide not to talk to anyone I don't talk to. As a result, they don't talk to Bill Gates either. And how am I liable? Why don't you post your e-mail address with your post and then see how you feel about "censorware" after your mailbox is full of penis enlargement offers.
RC
"T3 is seeking loss and damages of $7,907 (AU$14,000) for replacing blocked or compromised IP numbers, $2,683 (AU$4,750) for labor costs of technicians to establish an alternative e-mail system, $2,824 (AU$5,000) to purchase a new server computer
So because his IP was being blocked he HAD to get a new $2800 server? IP's are NOT hardcoded into the box (MAC addresses in the NIC's are) Does he relly think that little addition is going to go unnoticed?
and $11,296 (AU$20,000) for loss of income it claims to have incurred over a 20-day waiting period for a new Internet connection to be installed"
So this guy makes $564 a day with this shit?!
Maybe you really can get rich quick (in court, of course)...
"Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them."
What if this weren't about spam email, but about a mechanic who worked on someones car? If your mechanic mis-diagnoses your car, puts in the wrong part, and causes more damage than when he started, do you expect him to fix it all, and fix it right? And if he doesn't, you have to take it to someone else, do you have a valid case to make the first mechanic pay the bill?
Of course it all hinges on the fact that the first mechanic -did- make a mistake. If not, then you're out the cost of the lawyer too.
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
I think this guy should counter-sue. Now that news of this suit has reached /., his site is now unreachable. Thus creating a DDoS.
This DDoS was created as a direct result of the lawsuit being filed.
Boy, did he get you guys!
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Mark Twain
Mailservers are private. Nobody can force me to receive anybody's mail. I can block whoever I want using whatever method I like. If I want to block connections using some blacklist, that's MY choice. The blacklist only offers me advice on what connection to accept or not. I can freely choose to follow that advice or not.
In short: sue whoever you like. You'll loose.
This is your sig. There are thousands more, but this one is yours.
Check out some of the books the T3 Group is selling...
$ales $cript Book
a collection of the most powerful and useful phrases (scripts) a sales professional can use to counter any objection and close the sale
Web Marketing - beyond the basics
covering everything from Search Engine Optimisation, Permission Marketing Techniques, Viral Marketing, Multi Domain Registration, Opt-In Mail Lists, Competition Sites and much more
Yes, just what my business was looking for... forcing your customers to say yes, and such time honored promotional practices such as viral marketing! How did I manage to run a website without this vital knowledge?!?
Well, at any rate, there's another domain for my blocklist...
t3direct.com.au ERROR:"553 Delivery blocked; cannot accept mail from pro-spam domains."
And that's perfectly fair, if you ask me. Not that the Nevada judicial system is owned by the various casino organizations, but that people can be shitlisted. I wouldn't want some cheater/criminal trying to cheat or steal in my casino. However, it would be a lot better if the cheater/criminal could protest his case before the .
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Click here or here.
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
Maybe there's more information somewhere else, but, from what I did NOT see in the articles:
First off: Is there any proof whatsoever that being listed in SPEWS is in any way incorrect or libelous? Certainly it is not illegal, even in AU to add an IP block to that address as being friendly to either a known spammer or a known spamvertized site. After all, SPEWS bills itself as being opinion that nobody has to follow.
Unless being added to SPEWS has some form of illegality, what basis is there for suing Mr McNichol for expressing an opinion?
Secondly, if SPEWS is operated secretly, then how can anybody prove that this Joseph McNichol was responsible for them being blocked?
Is there some provable connection between him and SPEWS somehow?
It would certainly seem likely that sufficient people on the receiving end of the spam would have complained sooner or later such that SPEWS would put them onto the blacklist.
And even so - don't SPEWS say in their FAQ that they don't block sites based on complaints? That they depend on the knowledge of the *unknown* people that set up the lists directly? That it requires repeated offenses before a company is considered a 'Known Spammer'?
So where is the evidence - not apparent anywhere in anything I have seen of this matter - that there is any actual connection between Mr. McNichol and SPEWS?
If either of these proofs is missing, then this should be dismissed by the first competent judge in any jurisdiction.
Liquor
Sanity is a highly overrated commodity.
The fact that the article on slashdot should insure this, and I suspect that a number of somebodys will be keeping an eye on this company to insure that their IPs are blocked no matter how they get changed.
Why am I reminded of Bernie Shifman?
Tech Public Policy stuff
Oh yeah, it's not productive at all! (but it makes you feel a lot better sometimes, doesn't it?) :)))
I hate to argue it, spammers can go to hell and all, but that $7,000 might have included the cost of technicians trying tofigure out why the email wasn't making it to it's destination and working out a solution, as well as the time necessary to reconfigure machines.
Never mind whatever his ISP charges for IP address.
The amounts seem to be bogus, as there is no need for any equiptment replacement. Not knowing where spews is located, I can't say the jurisdiction is wanting.
But, as a defense, I would want a list of emails and addresses that were sent out. Then the list of emails and addresses that were rejected because of spew's actions. Then submit the list to a couple of class action attorneys in states with anti-spam laws and go after the spammers for sending spam.
Then when the spammers use the defense of the email not being delivered as to get out of the penalties for sending spam, then spews can use the fact that they saved the spammers more money than the scum sued for as a partial defense, if they don't get the entire case thrown out and the spammer's attorney sanctioned for bring such a case.
Fight Spammers!
So he was blacklisted, it doesn't prevent him from doing anything.
It does however allow others to deny serving him, which they have the right to do.
The people who caused the actual damage to him were the people who used the blacklist, not those that made it. There only act was to ignore him, AFAIK there is no precedent for damages due to ignoring people.
Aww, poor baby. Lost your marketing contracts? Looks like you're back to working at Mcdonalds and living in your parent's basement.
And to SPEWS: Fight the good fight!
From their website: The Company has established e-mail databases exceeding 2 million Australian and 30 million world addresses. Currently we send in excess of 1,000,000 e-mails per month to Opt In Permission e-mail subscribers.
So these scum have over 30 million 'opt in' email addresses to spam. Yeah, right. Someone shoot the bastards. No, that's too humane. There's some mediaeval tortures that seem more appropriate.
HH
I think Wallace may have deliberately sent me spam in order to provoke me -- he knew I'd complain since he was breaching his earlier promise to block my email addresses after earlier complaints. By provoking me to complain, he could claim a "victim" role, by falsely stating that I had "asked" to receive the emails and then unfairly complained and caused his business to lose its only internet connection (every other ISP and backbone provider had blacklisted him years earlier).
Spanford Wallace filed his suit in Pennsylvania (despite lack of jurisdiction) because he knew I'd have to hire an attorney there and spend thousands of dollars in legal fees and court costs to dismiss the suit. He knew the suit would be dismissed for lack of jurisdiction, and he chose not to sue me in California because he knew that California has a SLAPP statute that would have permitted me to collect attorneys' fees and damages (Pennsylvania didn't have a SLAPP statute).
The spammers' only goals in filing lawsuits are to gain "unfair advantage" -- adverse publicity for the opponent, and deliberate choice of an inconvenient and expensive forum.
It worked for Wallace: I stopped making spam complaints for many months because I was so distracted by the lawsuit. And he also deterred others from reporting spam complaints, by loudly and publicly announcing that he (and other spammers) would not hesitate to deliberately abuse the court system in order to punish honest people who make valid complaints.
Wallace's publicity campaign was transparent: he decided to file the lawsuit one day after I appeared on CNBC regarding another consumer advocacy issue; he wanted to "piggy-back" by suing a well-known consumer advocate. He posted a copy of the lawsuit on his web site and emailed dozens of reporters just minutes after the complaint was filed (of course, I learned of the suit only when the reporters called me, and since I couldn't respond to a suit I hadn't seen, Wallace's false and malicious claims were republished as if they were true -- with no follow-up when the suit was abandoned and dismissed several months later.
Although Wallace's suit was filed in Pennsylvania despite the absence of jurisdiction, I was forced to spend $5,000 to hire a Philadelphia attorney to prepare and file a motion to dismiss (I chose an attorney who had previously obtained a judgment against Wallace). As soon as we filed the motion to dismiss, Wallace simply abandoned the lawsuit (he submitted papers to the court claiming that a "settlement had been reached," though there was no settlement.
The only good news is that I haven't heard from him since then, but of course the bad news is that he drained $5,000 of my money and a lot of my time, and simultaneously scared off someone interested in buying a web site I owned (the offer to buy my business for $350,000 was withdrawn the day after the suit was filed, and five months later I sold the business to another buyer for $175,000).
Wallace also successfully deterred many spam complaints by proving his continued willingness to abuse court processes for personal gain.)
I assume that the spammer in the current case filed a suit in the hopes of driving up others' costs and extorting a settlement.
-- http://www.MarkWelch.com/ Pleasanton California
I doubt that it's just the American judicial system, given that we "inherited" English common law and (probably to some extent) legal practices.
Further proof that it sucks to be French. :-) (Hey, you predicted this kind of response...)
How do you prove that you're not guilty? Isn't that an attempt at proving a negative? I could make some ridiculous accusation against you, based entirely on circumstantial evidence. How do you defend yourself against such an accusation in a situation that puts you behind the 8-ball from the beginning? A system that presumes guilt sounds to me like it'd give the authorities carte blanche to lock up anybody who pisses them off, since they don't first have to make the case that they should lock somebody up.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
Here's the official SPEWS IP listing. I wonder how long it'll be before these IPs show up in permanent blacklists all over the Internet, never to emerge again.
Way to go, spammers. Watch your connectivity go bye-bye.
T3Group
|--------------------
1, 202.154.73.131, t3direct.com.au
1, 202.154.79.66, mail.t3direct.com.au
1, 202.154.79.0/25, t3direct.com.au
1, 202.139.241.136, www.t3direct.com.au
1, 202.139.241.128/25, t3direct.com.au
1, 203.55.16.6, titan.t3direct.com.au
1, 203.55.16.0/25, t3direct.com.au
---------------------|
That light you see at the end of the tunnel might be from an oncoming train.
The contract probably said that if a teacher has a drug problem, there would be a series of steps which the teacher must go through (certainly the first step when a teacher is on campus under the influence, would be removal from school and suspension, perhaps requiring an immediate check-in to a treatment program, followed by compliance with the treatment regimen, and consent to drug testing).
The contract, if it follows the usual policies of large corporations and government agencies, might impose all kinds of special conditions, perhaps even a "two strikes and you're out" rule, but the contract says whatever it says. You can't change the terms of a contract by having the administration or school board unilaterally announce a "zero tolerance" school policy (any more than the school board could unilaterally announce that all teachers must teach one more hour per day without additional pay). And even if the state legislature passed a law requiring that the teacher who uses drugs must immediately be fired, that law cannot impair a previously-executed contract (read your U.S. Constitution).
Note also that the student who is expelled under the "zero tolerance" policy will still be able to enroll at another school -- the state does have an obligation to provide an education to children. The notion behind "zero tolerance" is good, but there are a lot more ridiculous stories about zero-tolerance.
-- http://www.MarkWelch.com/ Pleasanton California
Ahh, I just assumed that they did--I know that the US's system of Common Law was taken from the Brits, and since nearly all civil trials in the US have juries, I figured that nearly all civil trials in the Commonwealth did too.
And, I admit, it would be pretty hard to find an email address if all you know is a name.
The article does not state the grounds on which the case is brought. Tort law is quite restrictive, the issue is not whether you have sufered a loss, the issue is whether the defendant had a legal liability for the loss. There being no contract between any of the parties in the case breach of contract or inducing breach of contract is not going to apply. The spam victim had no responsibility to the spammer to provide service.
The only grounds I can think of that the spammer could claim to have a case is in libel. To win the case the spammer would have to claim that the statement made was false, i.e. that he was not spamming. While Australia shares the corrupt libel laws of the UK it is unlikely that the issue of whether the ISP was spamming or not would be hard to determine.
It would be interesting to know the history of the law firm acting for the plaintif. If the court comes to the same conclusion concerning the case as many on slashdot it would not go well for them.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
That's probably because they operate off of lists from other companies. Companies are always lying about those "Opt-in" options, and placing you on the "I love spam" list regardless of your wishes.
I've tested it, opening new accounts on non-public email servers (read: NOT on Hotmail or Yahoo), signing up at a few places, and making sure to specify that I DON'T want to recieve any mailings at all. Sure enough, give it a week or two, and the spam starts rolling in.
So, the poster's company is most likely spamming "opt-in" lists that they didn't collect, but there's no gaurentee that all, or even most, of the people on the list actually did opt-in.
What you are postulating as a universal principle is actually a specific feature of the American judicial system
Americans didn't adopt this "feature" because they thought it might be a good idea. It's not some arbitrary preference. There are several reasons why innocence is presumed and guilt is proven. If you're presumed guilty, how can you expect to have a fair trial? If you really are innocent, you shouldn't have to prove your innocence just because some jackass decides to use the system to their advantage and throw a frivilous suit against you. God help you if someone in the government dosn't like you. What you say may work if the courts are fair, but saying that decisions made by the courts are always fair is fucking crazy. The courts should error in your favor.
Just because the french think differently dosn't mean this is not a universal principle. There is such a thing as "being wrong". For instance, our good buddies in Saudi Arabia think women should be required to completely cover their bodies in public. Is gender equality not a universal principle?
"Question with boldness even the existence of a god." - Thomas Jefferson
nd, I admit, it would be pretty hard to find an email address if all you know is a name.
It's also illegal to reveal the identity of a juror.
Actually, yes it does. At least it does in the sense that what is happening here is that the net is self-partitioning through the actions of spammers and anti-spammers into two parts, one with spam, and one without. The latter is owned by the uber-geeks. The blocking of spammers doesn't take down the net; it just isolates the bad parts.
Getting off is generally easy. It's the part of fixing your servers that is not. From what I've seen, the cases where entries continue to be on SPEWS are cases where spam happened yet again. This happens even though "the server is fixed" because of what is known as "multi hop open relay". The ISP getting blacklisted is accepting mail from customer servers that:
It's the ISP that gets listed, because that is the server that's making the connection for which an IP address lookup is made. The first customer that is an open relay might get fixed. The spammers find another, which might well be a new customer. Then the ISP gets listed again. They need to fix their approach to serving customers to get delisted.
A lawsuit won't fix the problem. SPEWS isn't being affected by this and will continue to operate. What the lawsuit will do is ensure that SPEWS never comes out in the open in order to protect itself from such things.
If instead we had a law that shielded blacklist operators from liability, then they could operate entirely in the open. Then it would be a whole lot easier to communicate with the operators. That wouldn't get the stupid ISPs delisted, but they should remain listed anyway, IMHO.
Obviously such a lawsuit shield isn't likely, at least not on a total basis. If we fight hard enough for it, we might get one which limits lawsuits to clear cases of specific matters like fraud.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
ISPs and businesses use this to block stuff at the mail server. Which means that most people will not be able to recieve mail from the addresses listed by SPEWS. I suppose you could make the same argument about censorware companies, except ISPs usually require you to "opt-in" on their censorware service, whereas the user usually has no say in how spam filtering is achieved at the ISP offices. AOL, for example, doesn't default new accounts to children's level filtering. These email censoring service offer less latitude to the individual, not more, than web censorware.
"I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots." - George Bush
May he rot in hell..
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Funny, I didn't read a law anywhere that publicizing a know scumbag's IP addresses is unlawful! (It certainly is effective!)
Let's say I spread the word that if you see elderly people dressed a certain way carrying sheafs of a magazine called The Light Tower, they're Jehovah's Witnesses, don't answer the door (like you didn't know that already.) Can the J.W.s sue me because they had to buy new clothes, and knocking on someone's door is "lawful and effective"?
The spammers should be tarred, feathered, run out of town on a rail, then drawn, quartered, and thrown into the Iron Maiden. Their corpses should then be incinerated, ground up, and shot into the sun.
And what pisses me off even more is that I'm a pacifist and believe that violence is never the solution to a problem. The fucking spammers make me think that perhaps my philosophy is not universally applicable.
Fucking bastards!
Unlimited growth == Cancer.
A guy on the street just charged me 5 bucks when I didn't accept his flyer.
It is different because SPEWS isn't forcing anyone to block spammers. SPEWS doesn't deny anyone service. They just refuse to receive packets from certain IP addresses. That others choose to block the same IP addresses isn't any of SPEWS' business. This isn't a boycott, it is an individuals, or several individuals, who have decided not to communicate with those networks. They aren't telling anyone else to block the same addresses, but they do anyway.
Clever signature text goes here.
Go to WWW.google.com and type this in:
napoleonic code "guilty until proven innocent"
You will find that many, many countries use this premise. It works because of the way the rest of the system is structured.
I can't force you to understand or believe anything, and it appears that most respondents to my post are unwilling to do the most cursory investigation of any statement that contradicts their unwarranted prejudices.
You're talking about how the law is. I'm talking about how the law should be. I'm not convinced that if you spread lies and the subject of those lies can prove that he was "damanged" by them that this should be an actionable offense.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
I have no idea what powers the "European Convention on Human Rights" has to punish or even investigate the infractions of signatories. But I can tell you that documents don't change reality without physical action. For example, Kuwait has signed at least five treaties outlawing slavery, yet the slave trade continues to flourish there according a recent Scientific American article. Another example, the US is signatory to the Geneva Convention, but much of the world considers the US-sponsored Iraq Sanctions to be in violation of that treaty.
My elder sister (who has a Phd., studied at the Sorbonne, lived in Paris for nearly five years, and currently owns a flat in Provence) confirms that France's legal system is fundamentally different from that of England and the United States. Judges are charged with finding the truth of events, rather than finding the guilt or innocence of the accused, and accusations are believed to be disproveable if false. I am told that the Mexican legal system is also based on the Napoleonic Code, but I do not know the truth of that statement.
Finally, allow me to point out that treaties often read differently in different languages; for an example the 1797 Treaty of Tripoliis distinctly different in the English and Arabic versions. I certainly am not claiming this is the case in the convention you've referenced (I am not fluent in French in any case) but I will hold by my statement that "guilty until proven innocent" is a specific feature of the legal system of the United American States that is not shared by the legal systems of all nations. Some societies get along without it just fine, while others that do subscribe to this principle are despotic tyrannies nonetheless.