Internet & Libel.

damnyanks

Hey,

Not sure if this is the right place to post or not. Sorry if its not.

Thinking of setting up an IRC network for a website I help with. Just looking for some info not too sure about it all....

If we were to rent the irc service from a company does this make it public and therefore give someone a good chance of getting us for libel ?

If we were to host it ourselves does that mean it is private and we could say pretty much what we want ? (Does renting space in a data center still make it private?)

Would hosting it in America be of any use ?

Just want to see if it is worthwhile (E.g not have to monitor everything everyone says... just incase its bad)

BTW Dont exactly have a big plan to talk bad about a person or company

Just want to see if its a worthwhile thing to do


Thanks

b20uvkft6m5xwg

In short...

If you libel an individual, you libel an individual.

The location of the hosting only determines where or what jurisidiction will govern the offence.

As of last August I know of a case invloving the Wall St Journal that didnt exactly settle an important issue which was...

Is the libel where the server is or where the libelous statement is read. In this case the server was in New Jersey and the person libelled individual was in Australia. Thus NJ or Aus Law !?

I havent kept totally up to date with recent develolments but the main point is that anything published on the internet, even chat rooms betw. a + b has no protection if any third party can read it.

David

BuffyBot

Someone may correct me on this.

You would be considered a "publisher" with regards to this information. The individual responsible for saying whatever it is would be responsible for the statement. However, if you as the publisher, do not take action to remove that statement from the public domain as soon as you are notified or aware of the issue, you may be responsible.

dahamsta

Originally posted by 80project
The location of the hosting only determines where or what jurisidiction will govern the offence.

IANAL

I dunno whether it's the WSJ case or not, but a recent case like it was effectively tried in both juristictions because the complainant didn't get the result they wanted in the first juristiction. The "result" could have been simply the matter of juristiction though. I seem to remember the decisions being in contrast with each other, which made the court-shopping all the more comical.

However it's for this reason I'd be inclined to say that hosting in the US probably won't help very much, because courts tend to be greedy -- in my experience, if they can give themselves juristiction, they most often will. It probably won't /hurt/ to host in the US though, at the very least it's usually a hell of a lot cheaper; and if you can get an Irish court to waive juristiction, they do have much stronger free speech laws in the U.S.

Either way, as BuffyBot suggests you need to watch out for getting yourself labelled as a publisher or an editor. You have to be very careful about how you monitor the resource in question, and more importantly what you do when faced with a problem. If you edit or delete something that's claimed to be defamatory, for example, you're effectively editorialising, and that creates a liability for you. (This doesn't apply so much in IRC obviously.)

Where possible you should place a sternly-worded - by a solicitor for preference - "posts are the property of the poster" -type disclaimer on the site/network, and you should avoid getting involved in editorialising -- try to avoid getting directly involved in flame wars, and try to act as a "can't we all get along" peace settler rather than taking sides in an obvious way.

If you do get threatened legally, hold out for a writ if you can. I've been threatened lots of times, but most of them don't even get as far as a solicitor's letter (which I throw in the bin, because they're worthless), and I've never had one go further than that. For the most part, sadly, people use legal threats simply as a tool, they rarely follow through on them.

Which isn't to say that one particular langer won't come along...

adam

damnyanks

Thanks for the replies

Would I only be considered "publisher / editor" if the information was published on a web page / email ? Or does that stretch over to chat as well ?

Its only really the IRC chat that I'm trying to find out about. The website is run by someone else who keeps an eye on stuff they "publish" there.


Thanks

BuffyBot

It can apply to chat and message boards.