Oxegen threads removed - legal action letter?

whiskeyman

ok, I realise and agree with why these threads were removed.
Even the most recent one, people were warned, but still posted dodgy remarks and comments.

Just wondering, could the mods please post up the letter from A.Cox on behalf of MCD threatening legal action against boards.ie and certain posters.

It may make for interesting reading for all of us with thoughts about this topic.

Thanks

flogen

Where were these threads and what were they about (if you can mention them without repeating the claims that MCD are obviously threatening boards.ie over)?

SpAcEd OuT

flogen wrote:

Where were these threads and what were they about (if you can mention them without repeating the claims that MCD are obviously threatening boards.ie over)?

they were in the gigs/events section and they were about MCD's running of Oxegen this year

Vexorg

I do not like the idea, its a bit like reproducing someones private message.

If MCD, Independent Newspapers and the named individuals and Arthur Cox, did not mind, I would be happy to consider and discuss it with the other Admins.

V.

Vexorg

There is to be no discussion of MCD or Oxegen on this thread.

Any poster who tries to discuss either will get a weeks ban and this thread will be locked.

V.

Talliesin

It's worth noting that legal letters are themselves subject to copyright law - a fact that has been used by lawyers in the past.

On the other hand the actual physical letter is the property of whoever received it (hence boards was within its rights the time they auctioned oned).

Steveire

boards auctioned a legal letter? When? Where?

Jonny Arson

Is this not setting a dangerous precident for Boards to take by taking down these threads?

From what I read on those afformentioned threads most of the posts and comments were honest, acceptable and within this the forum charter and the website's general rules.

I do know there is no right to free speech on this website but will this result in any so called ''defamatory'' post or comment resulting is a threat of legal action thus full blown censorship across this site? If this is setting a precident for Boards then 50% of the posts on this site could well result in Boards been taken to court.

I know we want Boards to stay the way as it is but if the bullyboy corporations get their way over censoring the truth for the sake of their mega profits then this site will go down the gutter.

hullaballoo

I think there's a possibility that if the letter was posted that at some stage in the future, there could be an action for contempt of court.

damien

Is this the 3rd or 4th bullygram in the past two weeks? The sharks are circling the good ship boards.ie

You should have a new section on the front page of who sent legal letters and over what.

Crucifix

I didn't see the threads/post in question at all, were they really bad?

DublinWriter

Zane from MTV2 wrote:

I do know there is no right to free speech on this website but will this result in any so called ''defamatory'' post or comment resulting is a threat of legal action thus full blown censorship across this site? If this is setting a precident for Boards then 50% of the posts on this site could well result in Boards been taken to court.

I know we want Boards to stay the way as it is but if the bullyboy corporations get their way over censoring the truth for the sake of their mega profits then this site will go down the gutter.

I'm not sure if I mentioned these points in this, or any other, thread before as I'm on pretty heavy brain medicine and the weather's too hot, but...

1) Generally, Solicitors won't encourage their clients to sue in such cases unless the organisation/person their client wants to sue is a 'mark'. A solicitor friend of mine many years ago introduced me to that wonderful term - a 'mark' is basically someone worth suing. As boards isn't a for-profit business, and I'd imagine has about 20cent and a Polish Zloty coin in it's tea-fund jar, no solicitor in his/her right mind would encourage their client to do a little more than allow a few scary letters to be written.

2) There is a big argument for taking forums such as this off-shore in this litigation-happy land of ours. Most will remember about 18 months ago, the whole 'Rate My Teacher' story broke in the Irish media regarding Irish kids making defamatory remarks about their teachers. I remember hearing a spokesman for ASTI come on and do the whole 'we are currently consulting our legal advisors and will be robust in defence of our members' spiel. Cue the same spokesman coming back on national media a week later, sounding less bullish and stating that as the site wasn't physically based in this jurisdiction, there was very little that could be done unless ASTI wanted to stump up serious money to float an international court case with very little chance of success.

अधिनायक

Vexorg wrote:

I do not like the idea, its a bit like reproducing someones private message.

If MCD, Independent Newspapers and the named individuals and Arthur Cox, did not mind, I would be happy to consider and discuss it with the other Admins.

V.

You have no balls.

Gillo

अधिनाय&#2325 wrote:

You have no balls.

Easy to say when it's not yours that are on the line.

damien

/awaits Pastor Martin Niemöller quotage

Nick_oliveri

That sucks, another thing not to be spoken of. I know this is not a democracy but this site is not responsible and mods did not intentionally encourage this sort of slander/whatever!!

pH

damien.m wrote:

/awaits Pastor Martin Niemöller quotage

When the Lawyers came for the skeptics,
I remained silent;
I was not a skeptic.

When they shut up the concert goers,
I remained silent;
I was not a concert goer.

etc ...

Tar.Aldarion

His letter just made me go and find out what people were saying and why.

Goodshape

wow, another 'unmentionable' topic

To be honest this sort of thing reflects far worse on those issuing the legal threats than it does on Boards.ie. There have been many disputes with corporate entities in the past which have been resolved by an actual human being logging in to defend themselves and their business. The fact that these people now (who apparently I can't even mention by name) feel the need to communicate through threatening and secret letters leads me to believe they don't have the ability to defend themselves publicly (ie. they're in the wrong).

That we can't use Ireland's largest Internet forum to discuss our unhappiness with a shoddy service is potentially devastating for the community here, but if that is absolutely the way it has to be then damien.m's idea of a visible blacklist is a good one, imo.

Unfortunately it's probably a bit much to ban any discussion (good or bad) of the events these guys put on, as they seem to be in charge of almost every event in the country, but maybe the festival in question could be forcibly removed from discussions in the future.

nuttz

It definitely gives weight to the idea of having the site hosted/mirrored outside of Ireland, with the goal of preserving what free speech is left on this site.

DublinWriter

damien.m wrote:

/awaits Pastor Martin Niemöller quotage

First they came for the solicitors,
We applauded.

Beruthiel

Steveire wrote:

boards auctioned a legal letter? When?

A few years back

Where?

At a boards beer, t'was most amusing

gandalf

Would definately like to see this/these letters and very curious on the content of the silenced threads too.

Sleepy

Come on Anna, tell us the full story...

Love the idea of listing the companies that have fired legal letters at boards. We could use it as a means of letting boards.ie members know which companies to boycott.

Beruthiel

Sleepy wrote:

Come on Anna, tell us the full story.

Clouds comment will tell you all - comment 11

Hobbes

MCD are just on pure damage control. The Mirror also recieved the same letter but went ahead and posted thier story. Appears boards.ie thread was linked out from another load of places, so MCD just noticed it.

At Vexorgs request earlier not posting any links or stuff, but you can more or less get all the information this incident relates to online outside of boards.

humanji

Well Indymedia have a nice photo of an "alleged" tent bonfire being put out. I'm trying to find any photos or videos but can't seem to find any. MCD are pretty damn good on their damage control

Is MCD actually able to stop people giving their opinions with these threats? Surely this sort of thing would never hold up anywhere?

CuLT

I think an easy way to resolve this is to just make the company in question an expletive, therefore mention of it would be "*****", but we'd all know who it was ¬_¬

While remaining defamation-free! \o/

Or would that work?

flogen

CuLT wrote:

I think an easy way to resolve this is to just make the company in question an expletive, therefore mention of it would be "*****", but we'd all know who it was ¬_¬

While remaining defamation-free! \o/

Or would that work?

We could all say stuff like "A certain major Irish concert organiser does this..."
I'm sure that would hold as much water as a rock though.

And yes, jomaji they could sue you for giving your opinion if it is defamatory (well, actually sue boards.ie for publishing your opinion)

John

Add MCD and Oxegen to the swear filter. Boycott discussion of MCD gigs. If they want to silence the bad things people are saying about their event then they should be prepared not to have any of their events mentioned at all.

So Aiken, eh?

tba

Aiken, fantasitc group of people, best out there, no competition

lostexpectation

John2 wrote:

Add MCD and Oxegen to the swear filter. Boycott discussion of MCD gigs. If they want to silence the bad things people are saying about their event then they should be prepared not to have any of their events mentioned at all.

So Aiken, eh?

as I attempted to point out,the all the music boards are full of *** promoted shows etc, if this is like the recent example of that IP Registering company where once they go overboard with legal threats no-one mentions them to starve them of word of mouth advertising and aso to avoid legal woes, then remove any thread discussing their gigs but I reckon this is much more about the legal pressure, tactical starving of WOMA won't last very long on the boards in this case.

John

lostexpectation wrote:

as I attempted to point out,the all the music boards are full of *** promoted shows etc, if this is like the recent example of that IP Registering company where once they go overboard with legal threats no-one mentions them to starve them of word of mouth advertising and aso to avoid legal woes, then remove any thread discussing their gigs but I reckon this is much more about the legal pressure, tactical starving of WOMA won't last very long on the boards in this case.

I don't know, there's only five *** events on the first page of Gigs/Events (the only forum where gigs are allowed to be discussed). I think it would be a nice retort to their recent antics to just stop giving them any sort of promotion.

Eoin

Goodshape wrote:

wow, another 'unmentionable' topic

To be honest this sort of thing reflects far worse on those issuing the legal threats than it does on Boards.ie. There have been many disputes with corporate entities in the past which have been resolved by an actual human being logging in to defend themselves and their business. The fact that these people now (who apparently I can't even mention by name) feel the need to communicate through threatening and secret letters leads me to believe they don't have the ability to defend themselves publicly (ie. they're in the wrong).

That we can't use Ireland's largest Internet forum to discuss our unhappiness with a shoddy service is potentially devastating for the community here, but if that is absolutely the way it has to be then damien.m's idea of a visible blacklist is a good one, imo.

Unfortunately it's probably a bit much to ban any discussion (good or bad) of the events these guys put on, as they seem to be in charge of almost every event in the country, but maybe the festival in question could be forcibly removed from discussions in the future.

If someone writes into a newspaper complaining about a badly run event or bad customer service etc, then the business can write into the newspaper and defend themselves. Of course, they are not guaranteed that this will be published, but the opportunity is there at least.

However, if a company were to see a complaint on boards.ie, sign up to defend themselves - would this be seen as effectively advertising / promoting / pimping / whatever, and would they then be banned?

eth0_

Crucifix wrote:

I didn't see the threads/post in question at all, were they really bad?

No they weren't! They were mostly first hand experiences of what happened (I suppose I can't use the word 'ordeal' or MCD will send me a legal letter...bullies), but because they weren't videotaped with a copy of the days newspaper and proof beyond reasonable doubt that it happened at oxegen 2006, apparently that's slander or whatnot.

eth0_

jomanji wrote:

Is MCD actually able to stop people giving their opinions with these threats? Surely this sort of thing would never hold up anywhere?

A judge would laugh this out of court. All it would take would be a few eye witnesses. These legal letters are bully tactics.

If anything...MCD have no right to throw hissyfit over this, if anyone should be annoyed it's the security company, because most of the complaints were levied at their staff.

Toast

So can we post a thread about the troubles at Hydrogen as organised by NDE? Its mexicos biggest festival!

jimi_t

John2 wrote:

Add MCD and Oxegen to the swear filter. Boycott discussion of MCD gigs. If they want to silence the bad things people are saying about their event then they should be prepared not to have any of their events mentioned at all.

Why should the bands suffer? To be perfectly honest the music business is an Oligopoly in this country - you're starving off about 40% of musical discussion if you boycott talking about MCD gigs.

While I commiserate with Cloud, DeVore et al, I really think they're taking the completely wrong approach to this - and I'd say that if it was my neck on the line as well. The boards.ie admin crew are only leaving themselves open to even more petty legal whingings if they bow down to this.

Look at how something-awful deal with idiots threatening to sue :cool:

pH

jimi_t wrote:

Look at how something-awful deal with idiots threatening to sue :cool:

Not all websites have retained the services of someone as good as Leonard "J." Crabs.

CuLT

So, I hear *** rape cats now!

And that their execs bathe in vats of virgins blood.

How about that eh.

There's nothing quite like a ***onalds. :cool:

Dont be at yourself

You know, I think a ban on all promotion and discussion of MCD gigs, accompanied with a nice letter to MCD informing them of this by the admins would be a great solution. Lets face it, boards.ie is an important medium for many people finding out about gigs and events! Does any other Irish website attract so many of their target audience?

Vexorg

Im locking this thread as it has gone off topic.

FYI.. I spoke to MCD today, they had never heard of Boards.ie before Arthur Cox brought the original removed thread to their attention.



V.

DeVore

ie: the lawyers did a search, found the content and pressed the cash register button, again.

Anyway, next time someone searchs for details of the event, maybe they'll find this thread instead.


Something Awful have at least the protection of the first amendment to protect them. Not to mention no stupid rulings about the publishers being automatically in trouble too.

And please (eth0 and others) stop using common sense, it simply doesnt apply to this area of the law?

DeV.