Ryanair secures order to reveal details of anonymous web posters

Best username ever

From breakingnews.ie

Ryanair has secured a High Court order compelling eircom to disclose the identities of two anonymous parties who have been making posts about it on a pilot's website which the airline says is "highly defamatory".

The airline claims the false material that has been posted on the PPRuNe website, known as the Professional Pilots Rumour Network, by two anonymous parties using the pseudonyms 'ASFKAP' and 'Built4Speed' impugnes Ryanair's excellent safety record.

Ryanair sought the orders because it intends to sue the two parties, who investigations undertaken on the airline's behalf show have IP addresses from the eircom pool of subscribers, in order to vindicate its good name.

(IP addresses are individual numbers assigned to each device that uses the internet.)

The orders were granted today by Mr Justice Paul Gilligan.

Under the terms of the orders, eircom must disclose to Ryanair all information, excluding emails, which assists in identifying the parties assigned the IP addresses where the allegedly defamatory posts came from.

The disclosure of the IP address relates only to the relevant time, date and time zones of the allegedly defamatory posts.

http://m.brne.ws/ireland/ryanair-secures-order-to-reveal-details-of-anonymous-web-posters-584535.html

donvito99

Hold on to your hats, boys.



And while I'm at it, token defamatory statement, blahblhblah fuel shortage, blahblahblah crew fatigue, blahblahblah O'Leary smells.

Best username ever

donvito99 wrote: »

Hold on to your hats, boys.



And while I'm at it, token defamatory statement, blahblhblah fuel shortage, blahblahblah crew fatigue, blahblahblah O'Leary smells.

Looks like the PR department at RYR have been reading the net and don't like what they see. "Quick threaten them and everyone will stop!!!!!"

extraice

what the name website ? that good read ....ryanlingus 29 euro for pope lol

IngazZagni

This has happened before on pprune from other airlines. The website just rolls over for requests like this. It would be interesting to see some examples of their posts. Where do we draw the line between freedom of expression/opinion vs blatant defamatory statements?

bootybouncer

Oleary and his eastern european moths......................nazi bastard

Technoprisoner

IngazZagni wrote: »

This has happened before on pprune from other airlines. The website just rolls over for requests like this. It would be interesting to see some examples of their posts. Where do we draw the line between freedom of expression/opinion vs blatant defamatory statements?

The court heard that some of the statements posted on the website by ASFKAP within the last two years include "Can we not have a separate forum for Ryanair narrow escapes near misses airworthiness incidents and bullying and harassment issues? They are coming so thick and fast now its is hard to keep up with them all"

"It would certainly make it a lot easier for the lawyers to go back and see the writing on the wall and the warning signs that went unheeded in the somewhat inevitable event that a Ryanair pilot eventually runs out of fuel and /or luck

Statements from Built4Speed include "its amazing to see the number of Ryanair Pilots predicting crash are increasing rapidly......The aircraft are new, they better stay that way that seems to be the reason nobody has died yet. Crash imminent."

oscarBravo

Technoprisoner wrote: »

The court heard that some of the statements posted on the website by ASFKAP within the last two years include "Can we not have a separate forum for Ryanair narrow escapes near misses airworthiness incidents and bullying and harassment issues? They are coming so thick and fast now its is hard to keep up with them all"

"It would certainly make it a lot easier for the lawyers to go back and see the writing on the wall and the warning signs that went unheeded in the somewhat inevitable event that a Ryanair pilot eventually runs out of fuel and /or luck

Statements from Built4Speed include "its amazing to see the number of Ryanair Pilots predicting crash are increasing rapidly......The aircraft are new, they better stay that way that seems to be the reason nobody has died yet. Crash imminent."

To be fair, there certainly seems to be a prima facie case for arguing that those statements are defamatory.

Peregrine

In fairness to Ryanair, posting comments like that on PPRuNe repeatedly over a two year period makes it personal and I don't see why any company has to put up with that on possibly the world's leading pilots' website.

extraice wrote: »

what the name website ? that good read ....ryanlingus 29 euro for pope lol

Excuse me?

pclancy

I've wondered how long this would take to happen. They are very quick to sue media outlets and newspapers, it was inevitable the world of internet forums would come into their radar. The worrying thing is that the tabloids cruise these kind of websites searching for news bytes, treating some random anonymous poster as an aviation expert.

Korean airlines also gets a hounding on pprune from certain repeat posters.

Stimpyone

Hypothetical question…

What if these two guys are genuine whistle blowers. Surely the judge should have requested some sort of investigation/information before hanging them out to dry.

seamus

Stimpyone wrote: »

What if these two guys are genuine whistle blowers.

If they were genuine whistleblowers, they would have reported it to the authorities, not posted it on a public forum.

Stimpyone

seamus wrote: »

If they were genuine whistleblowers, they would have reported it to the authorities, not posted it on a public forum.

While I get your point I’m not entirely sure that every whistle blower is going to go directly to the authorities.

All hypothetical of course.

LoLth

I know the temptation is going to be "pesky Ryanair, the gits...." but

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=13454

its not without precedent and its understandable. You *cannot* just say what you want online and think there's no way there'll be consequences. If its the truth, then that will come out in the court case so I'd imagine ryanair must be pretty confident that its not true if they're willing to fight it publicly.

What I dont like though is that the internet , and forums/blogs in particular, are being castrated by users not being able ot express an opinion or relate an experience without some smartarse small business owner / sole trader / corporation claiming libel/slander and the post having to be removed before any proof is offered by either side. Then again, it wouldnt be tolerated if some users had a bit of cop on and stopped trying to deliberately damage others by posting lies online or, worse, there werent people employed to make such false accusations as part of a negative marketing campaign. Sure, business made the internet huge but at least when it was small it had a higher sound:noise ratio.

as for whistleblowers: if someone had information that a plane was unsafe then they should go to the authorities and have the plane examined. If that plane flies and crashes killing X numbe rof people, then all the "whistleblower" has done is earn the right to post "I told you so" online. Go to the authorities, present the proof. if something happens after the case being ignored, then go to the press and stop it from happening again. In fairness though, I would hope ryanair would have a way to report issues that would not automatically result in bias against the person raising the concern or that the authorities could investigate without disruption to the airline or disclosure of their source. (I know next to nothing beyond rumour about ryanair or the airline industry so I have no idea if these exist or are farcical ideas in light of what's there currently)

Plowman

This post has been deleted.

Irish Steve

I've not read the postings in Pprune by the people mentioned, since the change of ownership, it's not the premier place that it used to be, but I digress.

Ryanair tried to intimidate and take action against a forum that is specifically and only dedicated to reporting incidents accidents and crashes, and works very hard to ensure that all items that are published can be verified and are accurate.

The site I'm referring to , the Aviation Herald, had reported a number of incidents with Ryanair, and others, and clearly were no longer "under the radar" at Ryanair.

Due to the very specific focus of the Herald, and the total absence of journalistic inaccuracies, the attempt to stop AV Herald from posting about Ryanair has not been successful.

A good few years ago now, as the lead agent for the ramp handling company, I effectively stopped a Malev 737 from departing after an overnight in Dublin. During my walkround, I'd found aluminium speed tape over the alternate static ports, and from my Pilot training and from reading things like accident reports, I knew exactly what the implications of that could be in certain circumstances, so after informing the captain of my finding, and his being unable to find anything in the tech log to explain it, I called it in to Ops, made it clear that until we had an explanation, there was no way I was going to push the aircraft back for departure, and they got the engineer responsible for the overnight checks called back to the aircraft.

After a number of international phone calls, it eventually turned out that the aircraft had been given a special clean at the home base on the Sunday, and the cleaners had not removed the speed tape after cleaning it, so it had flown all day Monday with the tape still in place, so the crew(s) doing walkrounds had missed it, as had the engineer doing the night stop inspections in Dublin. Once we'd determined what had happened, and the tape had been removed, it went on its way, 45 minutes late.

Shortly after it left, I was called to the Ramp Managers office, and asked about the reason for the delay. I told him it was simple, and that I'd be putting in a written report. His response was to tell me in no uncertain manner that I was not to put anything in writing. Not long after, in highly controversial circumstances, I was out of a job.

That incident should have been a MOR to the IAA, but it was kept quiet, even though the reason for the issue was nothing to do with anyone at Dublin.

A whistle blowers facility in an industry as heavily regulated as aviation is almost essential, there are times when that facility is the only way to get something out into the open. The UK has a facility for Pilots along these lines ,CHIRP, which is a Confidential Human Incident Reporting Program. It's main focus is towards flight deck incidents, rather than operational incidents, but the concept is totally valid.

It matters not if the pressure is from management, or the unions, if the result is the supression of an issue that could have implications for survival or safety, then that suppression is wrong.

We don't know if there are issues in Ryanair with things like fuel uplift policies, among other things, but if Ryanair are becoming concerned about their public image, something is changing, at one time, the attitude at Ryanair was that there was no such thing as bad publicity. That is clearly no longer their position. This latest development will need to be followed with interest.

sittinduck7

I think this is grat news altogether , especially if it creates a presedent and it filters down to all other types of websites where annnonimous posters can post hurtful an damaging stuff bout people.
Good on ya Mick , be nice to some of these keyboard warriors and flyers crash and burn .

donvito99

http://www.irishtimes.com/business/sectors/transport-and-tourism/ryanair-pilot-apologises-and-resigns-1.1634974

Dan Pepper, who identified himself when making the apology, had made earlier postings on the airline industry discussion website pprune.org using the username Vexed.

Very interesting development, from a legal viewpoint as well. Be careful what you say about your employer on the internet, it seems.

Five Lamps

donvito99 wrote: »

http://www.irishtimes.com/business/sectors/transport-and-tourism/ryanair-pilot-apologises-and-resigns-1.1634974



Very interesting development, from a legal viewpoint as well. Be careful what you say about your employer on the internet, it seems.

Would have thought that was a given, no matter who you work for.

Ryanairs action in no way dampen or affect whistle blowers. If an employee of that airline or any other airline has a genuine concern, they would not be relying on just posting on an aviation web site.