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Post by Cardinal Pirelli on Mar 13, 2016 20:46:43 GMT
You want people to spread lies and misinformation? Please tell me I'm reading that wrongly! You can get lies and misinformation anywhere. You may as well ban the internet, eye contact, hearing conversations on the bus, radio, tv, and dirt etchings if all you want is factsfactsfacts. You cannot misrepresent facts, that's the crux of the issue, opinions are no problem at all as long as you aren't throwing around factual misrepresentations. If you post a lie knowingly or unknowingly, even just linking to it, then you can be prosecuted. 'Bulletin Boards' are treated as slander rather than libel I believe so there is some leeway but if you cannot prove that it is true and that it is seen to be damaging then you are up the creek without a paddle. There may not be a large readership on BWW for example, but if there is a false story about an actor's health problems, say, and that is likely to be read by casting agents, producers, directors or anyone who might have their view affected by that untruth, then the size of the readership doesn't matter. As many on twitter have subsequently found out, just retweeting something isn't guilt free either, neither is ignorance. You may have a couple of defences though; if what you said has been in the public domain and has been widely spread or, particularly important for here, through 'fair comment' so that you can give negative opinions on whatever you want until the cows come home, as long as you don't misrepresent the facts. I believe the US law is more lax. There's long been a movement to reform the English law, and they are by no means perfect, but they're what we have. |
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Post by 49thand8th on Mar 13, 2016 22:21:52 GMT
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Post by Steve on Mar 14, 2016 0:58:40 GMT
If you post a lie knowingly or unknowingly, even just linking to it, then you can be prosecuted. 'Bulletin Boards' are treated as slander rather than libel I believe so there is some leeway I believe the US law is more lax. There's long been a movement to reform the English law Both libel (putting a lie in writing that damages someone's reputation) and slander (telling a lie verbally, including in a recording, that damages someone's reputation) are equally bad in the law. They are not criminal, so you cannot be prosecuted. They are torts, so the damage they do to the person's reputation is measured in money, which you can be sued for. The US, like most of the rest of the world, is FAR more lax than the UK, which is the capital of the world for defamation lawsuits. The difference is that in the US, the person saying they are defamed must prove the statement untrue. Whereas, in the UK, the person making the statement must PROVE IT TO BE TRUE. There are many many things which are true, but which you cannot PROVE to be true. The Daily Star told some harsh truths about Jeffrey Archer, but when he sued them, he won, because they couldn't prove the things they said. Later, Archer was jailed for perjury, which IS a crime (unlike defamation), as he lied in court by falsely alleging libel. When it comes to libel on forums, mods who approve posts before they appear, are in danger of being sued as well, as they take an active decision to approve the post. Here, where posts appear immediately, mods are much safer, but they have the obligation to consider any complaints about posts made. And if they ignore a libel complaint that later proves to be correct, they can find themselves sued as well. The safest course of action, if someone makes a libel complaint, is to delete the post. |
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Post by The Matthew on Mar 14, 2016 5:36:38 GMT
Here, where posts appear immediately, mods are much safer, but they have the obligation to consider any complaints about posts made. And if they ignore a libel complaint that later proves to be correct, they can find themselves sued as well. The safest course of action, if someone makes a libel complaint, is to delete the post. I've been looking into that. We have some obligations under the Defamation Act 2013 that go beyond simply deleting posts. UK law seems fair enough to me. If someone makes an allegation it shouldn't be up to the harmed party to do all the work to prove the allegation false, especially as they already have to prove that they've actually suffered harm as a result of the libellous statement. If that was how it worked then someone malicious could beat their victim into submission by making too many allegations to counter. The way UK law stands now a harmful claim needs to be substantiated, and the bar for that isn't set all that high. "Honest opinion" is a legitimate defence. |
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Post by kathryn on Mar 14, 2016 9:53:07 GMT
Getting rid of message boards isn't going to get rid of trolls. They'll just go to places like Twitter or Reddit. [ Indeed, and there's a reason why Twitter is the harassers' social medium of choice! It is trivially easy to set up and use multiple accounts to target someone for abuse or spread gossip and misinformation, and incredibly difficult to get those accounts shut down. At least with a forum it's confined to one space that the wider world is unlikely to see (most forums only have a few hundred active users at any one time) and it's pretty obvious when someone is setting up multiple accounts and using them to say the same thing. |
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