Drugs!

Borzoi

Originally posted by Hobart
Firstly Because I am not sure what the correct term for the 'owners' is. I have no idea who owns boards.ie. I have asked b4. .

A simple check from the first drop down bulletin - about boards.ie reveals:

The directors of boards.ie Ltd. are listed below:

Tom Murphy (DeVore)
John Breslin (Cloud)
Dan King (Regi)
Gerry Shanahan (Vexorg)
Sandra O'Casey (tr1n1ty)


A well kept sekrit:rolleyes:

DeVore

AHAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHHAHA.

Welcome to Ireland.


Welcome to our ****ED UP libel laws.

Please dont say anything bold... I'm legally responsible for publishing your words.


An Post and Telecom Eireann were granted "common carrier" status and its presumed that telcos have that coverage from slander on their phone lines.

The same CANNOT be said for ISPs and for certain a case can be made for websites being "publishers".

Once you publish it, you are as responsible for it as the author


Ask the Examiner why they indemnify their paperboys from lawsuit... Anyone involved with the distribution or publication of the offending material is as guilty as those who wrote it.

When we set this site up we understood that the day will come when we'll have to face those laws. The legal opinion is that we should

a. not have any assets so that we are unappealing as a target. (That wouldnt be hard, we have nothing but debt!)

b. Not fight the case as we havent a leg to stand on since the law is so broad that the use of new technologies to distribute content do not affect its application.

The day will come when we'll either stand and fight those laws or have to bow out... I'm frankly surprised we havent had more problems to date!


DeV.

DeVore

To quote from a good source:

In the English case of Corfe & Takenaka –v- Frankl [2000] the defendant sent three e-mails to the offices of Takenaka accusing Corfe, their Deputy Managing Director of affairs, assault and of refusing to support his children. The defendant used an alias and a hotmail account to cover his tracks but was traced through the IP numbers on his e-mails and was ordered to pay damages of £26,000 and costs estimated at £100,000. In Godfrey v Demon Internet Ltd [1999] The Times, 20 April 1999 the English Courts applied the laws of libel to a website.

However, for the avoidance of any doubt section 23 of the Electronic Commerce Act, 2000 states that: “All provisions of existing defamation law shall apply to all electronic communications within the state, including the retention of information electronically”. This section may go beyond a mere restatement of the existing law, under the pre-existing law it is the publication of a libel that is actionable , that is communication to third parties. The extension of defamation laws to the retention of information electronically seems to go beyond this and this may cause problems for service providers in the future.

(my bold emphasis)
Quoted from: http://www.ictlaw.com/online.htm


from the same source:
Defamation.

Article 40.3.2 of the Irish Constitution guarantees that the state will protect from unjust attack and vindicate the good name of Irish citizen. In practice this process is carried out by the operation of the common law tort of defamation. Defamation is:

“…the wrongful publication of a false statement about a person, which tends to lower that person in the eyes of right thinking members of society or which tends to hold that person up to hatred, ridicule or contempt, or causes that person to be shunned or avoided by right-thinking members of society”. McMahon & Binchy, Irish Law of Torts, (Butterworths: Dublin ) 3rd Ed. 2000 p882.

There is no doubting the seriousness of being found to have defamed another person. In De Rossa –v- Independent the plaintiff was awarded over 350,000 euro in damages and this award was upheld by the Supreme Court. Costs would have been in excess of this and an award of this type would be more than sufficient to shut many Internet sites down. Although, the Constitution (Article 40.6.1(i)) also guarantees freedom of expression, this right is subject to public order and morality.


DeV.

Hobart

Originally posted by Borzoi
A simple check from the first drop down bulletin - about boards.ie reveals:

The directors of boards.ie Ltd. are listed below:

Tom Murphy (DeVore)
John Breslin (Cloud)
Dan King (Regi)
Gerry Shanahan (Vexorg)
Sandra O'Casey (tr1n1ty)


A well kept sekrit:rolleyes:

Thanks for the info Borzoi. Directors are not necassarily owners tho.

Thanks for the info on the libel in respect of sites such as these in Ireland, Dev. That fairly well clears it up.

Victor

Originally posted by Hobart
Directors are not necassarily owners tho.

In this case, I think the directors and shareholders are largely aligned.

It is the directors that are ultimately liable for such things, shareholders are largely protected by limited liability.

Borzoi

Originally posted by Hobart
Thanks for the info Borzoi. Directors are not necassarily owners tho.
.

Limited company, directors are responsible, not owners (shareholders)

Glad to be of help.

yossarin

Dev - why don't you just sign boards.ie over to bibbles? or me for that matter.

I'll take a crack at it

DeVore

The directors are the sole shareholders.

We are only protected in so far as we are non-negligent about the position. We understand there is a risk and we've shown (and continue to show) a responsible attitude to the moderation of posts.

In the limited number of cases where someone has said something dodgy about someone else, it has been a clear case that Boards was used as a platform to vent sleen and defame the target. In those cases we've deleted the post and banned the user. Taking that action placated the threatened suit but that wasnt the point, the point was that what was said was wrong and defamatory.

A case will arise (and I'm surprised that IOFFL hasnt supplied us with one yet!) where what is said is justifiable and correct but also negative and where we are issued with a bullying legal letter to take it down in order to silence the person. When that case arises we'll have to make a decision to stand and fight or run and hide.

One thing that stands in our favour now is that Boards is big. The telcos have any number of possibly actionable things that have been ranted on the IOFFL board for example, but taking an action against us would make matters far far worse then the rantings of some disgruntled customer. Can you imagine what would happen? It would make the outcry and subsequent mirroring of Errorcom.com look like a teaparty.
So, we have no money, we have at least a case to make for leniency in the courts and if we stand and fight we'll make SO MUCH noise and hassle they'll be sorry they ever started. However little johnnies parents dont care about any of that and they are the people who can potentially shut us down. Hence my reluctance to open us up to that threat.

The final defence from the defamation pov is that we can show the extent of damage. Currently there are usually large payouts made because of unknown damage to the persons character. (inversely... recently Albert Reynolds won a case against a newspaper but was finally awarded 1 pound on the grounds that while they did defame him, everyone thought badly of him already and so the damage wasnt great!)
Boards can show logs of exactly how many people saw a defamatory comment before it was snipped so we can say "ok ,we published something defamatory but only 12 people saw it so damages awarded should take that into consideration."


Its a murky world and the best way to win, is to not be a target.

DeV.

DeVore

Originally posted by yossarin
Dev - why don't you just sign boards.ie over to bibbles? or me for that matter.

I'll take a crack at it

heheh, well, because I'm up for this fight. We knew this when we got involved and started Boards. We even went to see a specialist lawyer (who told us we were mad! ).

Personally, I'm up for this fight because despite what certain people might think of me, I'm a big freedom of speech advocate. Or at least freedom to "own your own words".

Why do you think that Eircom.net or Esat or Ireland.com or Ryanair dont have community sites? They are too big, too much to lose and it would just be a money thing for them... wheres the profit for all that risk??

DeV.

Victor

http://home.eircom.net/content/irelandcom/breaking/729550?view=Eircomnet

Interactive drugs awareness website launched
From:ireland.com
Wednesday, 14th May, 2003

Ireland's first interactive drugs website has been launched today.

The website www.dap.ie was set up by Crosscare, the social care agency of the Dublin Diocese, under its drugs awareness programme (DAP).

The main focus of the site is to give advice on drugs and drug-related issues.

There are sections with information aimed specifically at parents, current professional research on drugs and an interactive map detailing centres treating addictions.

There will also be a trained councillor, known as the Live Helper, available online from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. every Monday to Friday to offer information, support, advice and referral to anyone who needs it.

The site is divided in two; a youth section providing games, information, quizzes and polls about drugs and a professional/family section with information on various types of drugs, their effects and an interactive map of services for any area in Ireland.