Spammer and Defamation

danash

From the charter



What is Defamation?

• Defamation occurs where a false statement is published about a person which tends to lower that person in the eyes of right-thinking members of society. Defamation is a generic term – slander is defamation in a transient form, while libel is defamation in written or permanent (or equivalent) form.

• Defamatory statements include accusations of professional incompetence, or of unethical, illegal or immoral behaviour. Some examples from the Irish Courts include:

- Imputations of sexual impropriety (Sinclair v. Gogarty)

- Wrongly accuse a person of being a sympathiser with terrorism (McDonagh v. Newsgroup)

- Wrongly accuse someone of cheating in a horse race (Green v. Blake)

- Suggest a person tolerated serious crime (DeRossa v. Independent Newspapers)

- Suggest a nightclub proprietor tolerated the sale of drugs on his premises and was a “gay bachelor” (Reynolds v. Malocco)

• It is not necessary for a plaintiff to show that he was in fact lowered in the eyes of others and suffered loss as a result, only that the statement was of a type which tended to do so. This is not a comprehensive list of all possible defamatory statements, but gives a flavour of the range of the defamation definition.What is Defamation?

• Defamation occurs where a false statement is published about a person which tends to lower that person in the eyes of right-thinking members of society. Defamation is a generic term – slander is defamation in a transient form, while libel is defamation in written or permanent (or equivalent) form.

• Defamatory statements include accusations of professional incompetence, or of unethical, illegal or immoral behaviour. Some examples from the Irish Courts include:

- Imputations of sexual impropriety (Sinclair v. Gogarty)

- Wrongly accuse a person of being a sympathiser with terrorism (McDonagh v. Newsgroup)

- Wrongly accuse someone of cheating in a horse race (Green v. Blake)

- Suggest a person tolerated serious crime (DeRossa v. Independent Newspapers)

- Suggest a nightclub proprietor tolerated the sale of drugs on his premises and was a “gay bachelor” (Reynolds v. Malocco)

• It is not necessary for a plaintiff to show that he was in fact lowered in the eyes of others and suffered loss as a result, only that the statement was of a type which tended to do so. This is not a comprehensive list of all possible defamatory statements, but gives a flavour of the range of the defamation definition.




Am not looking for advice or an infraction here....


Let's say someone was branded as a spammer when in fact there was no reasonable evidence - let's further say that being branded a spammer and possibly reported to DNS name servers caused professional embarrassment - would that be

1 - Defamation ?

2 - A breach of the above charter?



I'm sure some of you can read between the lines here but my read of this post is that it is strictly by the book and is looking to explore a legal discussion.

Tom Young

Am not looking for advice or an infraction here....


Let's say someone was branded as a spammer when in fact there was no reasonable evidence - let's further say that being branded a spammer and possibly reported to DNS name servers caused professional embarrassment - would that be

1 - Defamation ?

2 - A breach of the above charter?



I'm sure some of you can read between the lines here but my read of this post is that it is strictly by the book and is looking to explore a legal discussion.

I am not going to rehearse the charter. The test for defamation is the lowering of a person in the minds of right thinking members of society. The cases in the above post exemplify matters.

There are other aspects of the charter which you've not included - See below.

Spammers are by definition posting or creating a nuisance on the Internet property be it a website (database), email address or other. They do so with purpose, malice or with the intention of goading some other user, or to purposely create a nuisance. We've all seen viagra, rolex and other SPAM for example.

Spammers to my mind are a nuisance and should be dealt with severely and currently there is a section of the 1991 Criminal Damage Act which deals with damage and Section 9 of the 2001 CJ TFO Act deals with unlawful use of computers.

An example might also be the create of multiple user accounts to further goad users.

Going through the above in detail.

The DNS or Domain Name System (Space/Servers), is the logical system for addresses fixed or dynamic which allow users or entities connect to the Internet and transact business. A Domain Name usually has an IP - Internet Protocol, address assigned to it again, either fixed or dynamic.

Transactions on the Internet are traceable to a logical terminal or address which can be fixed or dynamic, but is not necessarily linked to an individual user. You might see Tom Young coming in from 192.168.2.0 on a given day and some other address on another day, depending on where my location, terminal or access point is located.

Being reported to DNS name servers makes little or no sense by definition. Being reported to some person or user who moderates might be more logical. An action banning might take the Users Account and Ban the User name specifically and normally in relation to a 'given' thread. Though there is a site-wide banning policy in operation for spammers and people who randomly threaten legal action.

This is not defamation, as the user name is not logically linked to a person. There is also the argument that the user name is relatively confidential unless linked to a personal address which is published. Causing oneself embarrassment through inappropriate use or comment is something which is a problem and subjective. Remember, qualified privilege exits as does the rule that where a truth is extant the action in defamation will fail. If you want to read about this linkage between IP addresses and natural beings or people then google the Article 29 WP document 136.

A person here, as a poster is not actually an identifiable person in most/many circumstances. Unless they chose to be, they can and in many cases do use duff or non-logical/identifiable email addresses.

In relation to the charter.

Spamming
Spam will be deleted. Repeat spammers will be banned and it is unlikely these bans will be lifted without much grovelling.

Prejudicial Posts
Prejudiced posts will be edited or deleted. This includes, amongst other things; racism, sexism and sectarianism. Other unreasonable or offensive prejudices are also covered.

Inappropriate Material
Posts containing inappropriate material will be edited or deleted. Inappropriate material includes (the obvious) pornographic material, but also includes any other material that I, or any other moderator of this forum, deem(s) to be inappropriate.

Drugs
Legal issues surrounding drugs can be discussed. Debate about the relevant laws is welcome, and encouraged. However, do not advocate the use of drugs, or discuss any aspects of drug usage itself. Such discussion is both against boards.ie policy, and is (so far) inappropriate to this forum.

For Sale
Due to some threads selling law books causing major problems for the moderating team on this forum and on the site in general, users will no longer be allowed to sell anything via this forum. In future, if you are looking to sell goods - go to www.adverts.ie.

Issues with moderators
We are here to protect you and boards.ie. We do not expect to have any trouble in this forum, but there may be issues between posters and moderators. If you have an issue, use the private messaging function or else start a thread in Feedback. Do not give out in this forum about any moderator whatsoever.

Reporting Posts
Any thread or post that contravenes the charter should be reported. When reporting a post, make sure you have good reason. Someone disagreeing with you is not a troll, not all arguments are abusive etc. Abusing this feature is frowned upon. The repor a post icon is to be found at the bottom left-hand-side of every post (except your own), and looks like this: .

General Posting Guidelines
General posting rules apply here as in any other forum on boards.ie. I expect common sense to be used, especially in this forum. Please refrain from muppetry.

Before you post a thread, consider the following:

Is what I'm about to post relevant, coherent or in any way interesting?

Is it suitable for this forum?

A Moderator might take action based on a review of the Users previous posts, users trends or IP address. In my case I tend to know the 'form' of certain users here and I act with relative swiftness on certain issues, all within the Charter. The evidence might be some form of comment which detracts from a users point of view, detracts from a moderators action or is just generally in bad faith. I used the example of the creation of another account which can be done. Also, people do write in a certain fashion! ...

So, to me it's probably muppetry, spamming and potentially inappropriate material etc. Therefore a breach of the charter.

How it can be causing professional embarrassment is a complete mystery to me. Using your boards handle in a professional context would be a little bit interesting to my mind, unless you maybe worked for boards.ie. I say boards, though that extends to any Internet chat room/s.

There is a UK case on this, where the relative privacy of a blogger was unmasked by the Courts, basically for being silly. The case is The Owner of a Blog v Times Newspapers or Nightjack.

Tom

Maximilian

I'm closing this thread for now pending discussions with the CMods.

Danash, your on thin ice as it is.

edit: Thread stays closed, since it has more to do with mischief than discussion.

nesf

Danash, for creating a second account to circumvent a forum ban you are now permanently banned from this forum.