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Twitter Reveals User Details In UK Libel Case
whoever57 writes "In a case that could have implications for the Ryan Giggs affair, Twitter revealed user details in response to a legal action filed in San Mateo county, CA by lawyers representing South Tyneside council. The alleged libel refers to critical comments made via Twitter. It is possible that one of the people making the critical comments is one of the council members."
The footballer thing is about being silenced against telling the truth.
The Tyneside council thing is about being identified for libel proceedings.
Lots of people in the US have had the latter happen to them. But the former does not and still does not apply in the US. The only "implications" are that in both cases the complainant is from the UK.
Also, this is one of the most boring distractions from real problems the media has been stirred up into obsessing itself with. Cameron's a smart fucker.
Ryan Giggs. Ryan Giggs. Ryan Giggs. Ryan Giggs. Ryan Giggs. Ryan Giggs. Ryan Giggs. Ryan Giggs. Ryan Giggs
My right to free speech is more important than the right to privacy of a public individual being protected by an abusive court order in a completely different jurisdiction. The fact that this is a legally enforceable order handed down by a branch of government makes it a political issue and thus political speech. If a court order was never issued in the first place people would have stopped caring by now.
A council spokesman said: “The council has a duty of care to protect its employees and as this blog contains damaging claims about council officers, legal action is being taken to identify those responsible.”
That's some GREAT use for public money -- feeding lawyers, fueling scandals and elevating shit posted on twitter to something other than rumors.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Twitter is in California, and a California court ordered them to reveal information. Twitter is complying with the law.
Try making it more relevant:
Brits using American court system to sue Americans.
Still News at 11 for me.
WTF is with editors these days? First, title of article is totally wrong, because this legislation has NOTHING to do with UK, but with US per se (they had to brought it to US court where there you can still sue for libel, but well you can't do superinjuction woodoo). Article also makes sensationalist claims that this decision helps "That Another Football Player" case - well, it doesn't. This is one, concrete person, who is sued for libel. This is not injunction to stop the spread of information - people who will retweet this person message or information won't be liable for any violation of law as long as they will reference this user and his information accordingly.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
Personally I think he should be suing his solicitors for not acting in his best interest. The details of almost every "super" injunction have been released, thanks mainly to parliamentary privilege. Once the injunction was made a lot of people wanted to know who it was, so when his name does get released there was massive coverage. They would have known this, but advising your client to put his hand in the air and say mea culpa means you can't charge quite so much.
Quite frankly I couldn't give a damn about who it was and who he slept with, but some people do. The only reason I can see why is that people like Ryan Giggs actively sell themselves to the public - effectively training people to want to know everything about him - and he derives a handsome income from it. He also appears to sell himself as a family man, so having it made public that he had an affair may affect his earnings. Clearly he couldn't make a choice between keeping his dick in his pants and keeping his name clean.
I don't like these injunction has they can be abused - as seen by Trafigura case.
Freedom of speech does not include the right to slander or libel people you don't like, and it absolutely does not include the right to do so anonymously. You have the right to free speech - but you also must obey the libel laws, and you must be prepared to take the legal consequences of your free speech.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
At this rate we'll get the reputation of being as lawsuit-happy as the US :-(. Though we've been Reagan's bitch ever since Thatcher. As, sadly, has the US.
Don't be ridiculous. The UK is already known as the go-to country for defamation lawsuits.
England is the go-to country for defamation lawsuits. Scottish courts are nowhere near as generous with their damage awards.
This "sue everyone" behavior came straight from the US, you moron.
Ryan Giggs, is that you?
Right, because those are the only kind of lawsuits.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Is anything Scottish anywhere near generous? They only put salt on their porridge because it's cheaper than sugar.
P.S. Nicely picked up. I missed it first time.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
the trotting out of stereotyped remarks is a clear indicator of one who is either too weak or too stupid to come up with thoughts and judgments of their own.
~.~
I'm a peripheral visionary.
The freedom of speech is not in question in the article. The journalistic source is also not in question. It appears that people who find Twitter turning this information over to be controversial are mistaking Twitter for a journalism publication. Twitter is the mechanical "printing press". Freedom of speech is not the same as freedom on anonymity. The Boston Globe or NYT don't demand that THEIR identity be protected, they demand that the source be protected (and don't always win on that, and sometimes the journalist has to sit in the pen awhile).
In other words, there is good news and bad news about "self publication". The good news is that you don't have to convince a reporter or editor to run your story. The bad news is that you are identified the same as the editor or reporter is immediately identified when they run their story.
Gently reply
stereotypes are just shortcuts to the truth.
Ryan Giggs? Ryan Giggs Ryan Giggs Ryan Giggs Ryan Giggs Imogen Thomas Ryan Giggs. Ryan Giggs, Ryan Giggs Ryan Giggs, Imogen Thomas super injunction.
Ryan Giggs Ryan Giggs Imogen Thomas. Ryan Giggs!
Irish boobs? (Sorry, had to.)
Your right of free speech is juridiction dependent. You can have all the free speech you can have in the US. But if you anger some other governement because they consider that blasphemous/libelous/whatnot, then you better *never* go in *their* juridiction : you will be held to the full length of the law, free speech in the US or not. And there is not DIDLY SQUAT that the US could do agaisnt it.
I don't believe you. Your right to name him is a complete irrelevance to you. It's not a serious political issue, it's not a serious social issue, it doesn't advance any public debate and it's not going to make the slightest difference to your life, or anyone else who isn't directly involved. This case isn't primarily about rights, it's about money and who is allowed to make it by doing what to whom. Some newspapers make a lot of money from following people around, photographing them in the street, out shopping, dining in restaurants, reporting on every first date or slip in dress sense, perpetually harassing and degrading the quality of life of some individuals. If anything, there should be more widespread access to privacy protection, for example through the Press Complaints Commission....just look at the way the much less wealthy woman involved has been all over the newspapers.
The case in the current article is much more serious, and this is one that's gone straight through the US courts (or so the article says, the BBC are saying it's not known if the court has agreed to the request). IMO threats or actual libel action and the crippling or impossible costs associated with it are a much more serious threat to genuine freedom of expression that limits on reporting individuals' private lives where there's no public interest justification at all. Not that the council bringing the action can sue for libel, which rather questions whether it's a legitimate use of public funds to do this in the first place.
The US attitude to this is inevitably going to win, to a point, because of the nature of the Internet and US arrogance on the issue. I'm more worried about certain other restrictions than celebrities' privacy.....things like restrictions on reporting rape victims' names, children's names, or restrictions on reporting until trials have been concluded to avoid tainting jurors and witnesses (not to mention innocent people's reputation, like Jo Yeates's landlord who was all over the press when he was arrested for her murder and is now having to sue half the nation's press).
The US won't have it all it's own way, though. Even the US has restrictions on speech and is not going to be happy at not being able to shut down everything from libellers and people who sell holidays to Cuba to Wikileaks and Jihadis. It's going to be a messy fight.
What seems to be the matter here, and what's really riled up the Labor leader of Tyneside Council, Iain Malcom -- is the actions of an anonymous blogger -- Mr Monkey -- on his blog, rather than Twitter. Twitter is a sideshow. Mr Monkey has thrown most of his dookie on his blog, not on Twitter, but the ever-vengeful Iain Malcolm has seen fit to go after Twitter.
By the looks of it, Iain Malcom is a bit of a psychopath, who's waging a war against said anonymous blogger, at public expense. Mr Monkey runs a highly inflammatory blog, which has made unsubstantiated allegations against Mr Malcolm and his cronies, and so Iain Malcolm has been goaded into behaving unethically, by misusing public funds to lean on Twitter to find Mr Monkey so he can crush him in court.
Even if Mr Monkey is lying, I absolutely despite bullies and psychopaths, so I'm hoping that this will ultimately blow back on Iain Malcolm. His actions in this debacle, makes him seem like an extremely unsavoury character, who should probably be kept as far away from political power as possible as it is.
Freedom of speech does not include the right to slander or libel people you don't like, and it absolutely does not include the right to do so anonymously. You have the right to free speech - but you also must obey the libel laws, and you must be prepared to take the legal consequences of your free speech.
Yes it does. Btw. You have a small penis :P
and the US has defamation laws too.
You might as well quote the various UN resolutions regarding the left bank in Israel to say that they are binding. It makes no difference. If the government in question doesn't apply the law it has no effect and the 'freedom' does not exist.
How about Article 10 of the European Declaration of Human Rights, which trumps UK law, and the government in question (the EU) does enforce it (via the European Court of Human Rights). Sorry, but this whole "The UK doesn't have freedom of speech" is just a US myth, like the myth that we don't have a constitution -- we do, and it's legally enforceable. It can be difficult and expensive to pursue a case, but I don't think the UK is alone in that.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
I do beg your pardon - for forgetting that you're also dour ginger alcoholics with no sense of humor.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
We don't have free speech in the sense that the US does. If you read the wording of the Human Rights declaration there are quite a lot of exceptions to all parts of it, e.g. national security. Well, actually that isn't that different to the US these days, but the point is that in some cases free speech is not allowed. In the UK "incitement to racial hatred" is a crime, in other words you are not free to say something which might induce someone else to hate others based on race. People have gone to jail for doing it. It is actually worse than just curtailing free speech because it creates a situation where the thoughts other people have because of something you said can incriminate you.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
This whole thing was filed under "Don't give a fuck" until I read the part about the dirty tea sucking cretinous Brits using OUR courts for this shit.
I don't care what happens to soccer players or councilors in the UK, but when these turds wash up on our shores, then we need to stop this shit.
The trouble is, it is free speech in pretty much the sense that the US has it -- there are limitations in the USA too. I doubt Bradley Manning would (will?) get far on a freedom of speech defence. The situation in both countries is that there is a constitutional right to free speech, but there is a recognition that there are limits to freedom of speech, and government from time to time passes laws restricting speech that might or might not be within those limits; it then gets fought out in the courts.
The UK government seems to be arguing that the threat of racial violence in the UK is so real and imminent that incitement to racial hatred is comparable to shouting fire in a crowded cinema. I happen to think that argument is rubbish, but that's besides the point. There's nothing to stop the US government trying exactly the same thing. If they do then in both the UK and the USA it's then up to the courts to decide whether the argument is valid or whether it's a violation of the relevant constitution.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
Libel and privacy are actually two entirely orthogonal concepts. For example something could be true (so by definition not libellous) but it could still violate privacy laws because it's nobody else's business.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
stereotypes are just shortcuts to the truth.
Lemme see... ACs are mostly trolls who aren't worth taking seriously.
Hey... worked in this case at least!
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Is anything Scottish anywhere near generous? They only put salt on their porridge because it's cheaper than sugar.
the trotting out of stereotyped remarks is a clear indicator of one who is either too weak or too stupid to come up with thoughts and judgments of their own.
Not surprising, he's probably American. All Americans are religious nutcases who think that Pi = 3 (*) and know nothing about the world north of Buttfuck, North Dakota. ;-)
:-)
Actually... probably more truth in that one than the "mean Scot" stereotype, eh guys?
(*) I'm thinking that this one should be called "American Pi"
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
All Americans are religious nutcases who think that Pi = 3 (*) and know nothing about the world north of Buttfuck, North Dakota. ;-)
Just goes to show - who could expect some commie eurotrash to know anything about the great country which is US?
1. Value of pi varies by state. This is because the US Constitution does not give the Federal government the power to regulate it - it is reserved to the States and the People. Anyway, what with pi being way above 4 in UK, Germany and other socialist countries, it's not surprising that you're jealous of ours being so low.
2. Buttfuck is in Alabama.
How about Article 10 of the European Declaration of Human Rights
The what?
Do you mean the European Convention on Human Rights (which is nothing to do with the EU, and technically doesn't trump UK law within the UK), or the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (which is EU-related) which only applies to EU bodies and member states when implementing EU law?
While, under the Human Rights Act, UK courts are public authorities must act in accordance with the ECHR, if there's UK law (either an Act, or case law) that conflicts with the ECHR, they must follow the UK law. The courts can try to interpret the law compatibly, but if they can't, there's nothing the Court can do to strike out the law. In the Strasbourg Court, the ECHR will trump domestic law (to a degree), but all the ECtHR can really do is issue fines/award compensation. The UK follows the ECHR (some of the time) more for policy reasons than any legal requirement.
In any case, the ECHR doesn't include an absolute "right to free speech". It includes a qualified "right to freedom of expression". In particular, in article 10(2), the Charter notes that the
exercise of [this right], since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.
Which obviously includes libel, contempt of court and privacy. So, not only does the ECHR not trump UK law, in a privacy/libel case, Article 10 may apply, but so does Article 8 (the "right to respect for private and family life, home and correspondence"), and neither trumps the other - it is just a balancing exercise for the Court.
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Twitter: @dainsanefh
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Twitter: @dainsanefh