Censorship

[Pondlife]

Do you think he meant soliciting?

£10K on soliciting in Brum!!!

I'm pretty sure if you spend over 20 quid you get a free ipad.

[shaunbhoy]

£10K on soliciting in Brum!!!

I'm pretty sure if you spend over 20 quid you get a free ipad.

Or in your case, a free lily-pad!!

[Pondlife]

Or in your case, a free lily-pad!!

I see what you did there.

[Incognito]

As the post was quite clearly made as a joke then AtW would have been wasting his time suing anyone, also the high court has ruled that comments on bulletin boards are to be taken as slander and not libel. It would have got thrown out after 2 minutes leaving him with a hefty legal bill and another avenue to take the piss out of him.

He should have know that what he posted on a friday evening was not going to be greatly respected by the audience and he could have handled the whole thing far better.

Never, ever, ever think you can get away scot free posting defamatory comments about an individual on a web forum.

It's libel, the Internet is recognised as being a public forum, as shown in Keith-Smith v. Williams.

Humour is most certainly not a defence to libel. Libel reverses the presumption in a case, which means Paddy, that you would have to demonstrate your comments weren't defamatory rather than Atw having to prove they were. Seeing how you've already admitted you only meant it as a joke, I'm siding with Atw.

A lot of people make the mistake of thinking that damages need to be quantified by the plaintiff for a court to award damages, but if Atw were able to show the comments made against him were made with malice a court can and nearly always does award punitive damages. We're not talking small amounts here either.

I haven't seen the thread that people were talking about, but I'd be very careful before making disparaging comments about a person whilst linking to his source of income.

[OwlHoot]

AtW's solicitor has probably advised him to stop posting here for the time being, in case his continued posting could somehow prejudice any case he might want to bring.

[cojak]

Or reduce the size of his beer round at the next meet up.

Lighten up guys, the thread was removed. AtW isn't that uptight.

[PRC1964]

WCS.

aTw has been here for years, come to think of it, at least a decade, and has been happy to take all the jokes thrown at him. Apart from a slight wobble when he thought his IP address had been published by Fiddleabout (I think it was him) I haven't known him to do any real flounce, despite our best efforts.

[Paddy]

Never, ever, ever think you can get away scot free posting defamatory comments about an individual on a web forum.

It's libel, the Internet is recognised as being a public forum, as shown in Keith-Smith v. Williams.

Humour is most certainly not a defence to libel. Libel reverses the presumption in a case, which means Paddy, that you would have to demonstrate your comments weren't defamatory rather than Atw having to prove they were. Seeing how you've already admitted you only meant it as a joke, I'm siding with Atw.

A lot of people make the mistake of thinking that damages need to be quantified by the plaintiff for a court to award damages, but if Atw were able to show the comments made against him were made with malice a court can and nearly always does award punitive damages. We're not talking small amounts here either.

I haven't seen the thread that people were talking about, but I'd be very careful before making disparaging comments about a person whilst linking to his source of income.

That case (Keith-Smith v. Williams) is not really relevant and the defendant made extreme accusations. "The defendant has been invited to apologise and has not only neglected to do so. nThe defendant suggest that the claimant is a sex offender, a sexual deviant, has been charged with sexual offences, whether soliciting or otherwise, has been guilty of sexual harassment and alleging that he is a Nazi or has Nazi sympathies or Nazi-type sympathies and/or has racist sympathies."

The insinuation that someone may not be heterosexual and have a webcam is rather a common leg pull on forums and can not be taken seriously.

[d000hg]

If you make it into a question "did you do X with Y" rather than a suggestion "he did X with Y" do you avoid any culpability or can the insinuation alone be enough?

On a serious note... AtW your complaint was that the guy in question might search his name or even come across the page through M12 itself, and be upset. I would say that even if nobody posted rude things, he could be offended the fact you posted his personal details on a web site like this. As such it was a silly mistake on your part.
I actually like hearing SKA news (when it's real news) and am supportive of entrepreneurs but I think posting anything personal about anyone other than yourself is unwise, YOU could be the one who ends up in trouble as the boss. Keep it business/technical.

[AtW]

I actually like hearing SKA news (when it's real news) and am supportive of entrepreneurs but I think posting anything personal about anyone other than yourself is unwise, YOU could be the one who ends up in trouble as the boss. Keep it business/technical.

I posted a link to public 3rd party web page related to SKA.

My mistake was that the page was not generic news about the company but involved an individual who wasn't me - whilst my actions were stupid as I have underestimated degree of recklessness of some of the posters on here, my actions were certainly neither illegal nor breaching any personal privacy of individual involved as the page was public page designed to be public.

I don't want to discuss this matter any further - Incognito made some good points though.

I nowl consider the matter concluded, thanks to swift actions by moderators, and in the future I'll refrain from posting anything that links myself and my business, and would like to ask everyone who does that to consider possible implications to the business that "jokes" can cause.