boards.ie legal responsibility

ZeRoY

Here's a question I have been asking myself time and time again, on certain topics/threads, boards.ie moderators/admins often put up notices that posters should not post certain information. Etc as it could put boards.ie into legal challenges. This despite the terms and policy of the site stating the following:

"Please note that you are liable for the content of any Material you post on boards.ie. Boards.ie Limited accepts no liability of any nature whatsoever for any Material posted on boards.ie by users. Any views or comments expressed in user posts are not necessarily the views of Boards.ie Limited, any entity associated with it or any of its employees or agents."

So who is liable, boards.ie or the poster?

NoQuarter

ZeRoY wrote: »

So who is liable, boards.ie or the poster?

To find out the answer to that question will take a court case and a decision by a Judge. To get to that stage will incur a huge cost.

The mods want to avoid that. Prevention is better than the cure and all that jazz.

ZeRoY

NoQuarter wrote: »

To find out the answer to that question will take a court case and a decision by a Judge. To get to that stage will incur a huge cost.

The mods want to avoid that. Prevention is better than the cure and all that jazz.

Ok so could go either way then, and yes, makes sense on the prevention. Thank you

Paddy De Plasterer

Is there not some section in 2009 Defamation Act that indemnifies the site owner such as this from anything that a poster puts up- in other words the poster is responsible.

NoQuarter

ZeRoY wrote: »

Ok so could go either way then, and yes, makes sense on the prevention. Thank you

Absolutely. Anyone can put any clause in to any contract etc, but lawyers do what lawyers do best and bring a case about it and fight it.

Lawyers can pick a fight about all but the most established areas of law so a clause or having a case to back up your legal argument is of little help in avoiding the cost of a trial.

Look at it this way, the only reason trials actually are trials is because one person thinks they are right and the other thinks they are right.

Tom Young

No. S.I. 68 of 2003, Hosting Defence - Reg 18. 2000/31/EC ECommerce Directive. Liability accrues, potentially when knowledge does.

Mulvaney v The Sporting Exchange t/a. Betfair.

NoQuarter

Paddy De Plasterer wrote: »

Is there not some section in 2009 Defamation Act that indemnifies the site owner such as this from anything that a poster puts up- in other words the poster is responsible.

No there is case law on the issue but even if there was, that wouldnt stop it going to court and racking up costs regardless which is the point.

murraykil

Tom Murphy himself has stated that "you own your words" and boards accept no repsonsibility.

There are issues though as I have seen examples where private citizens have been defamed on the forum and the post will remain, while in the same thread an anonymous poster is "defamed" and the post is "moderated".

I even got banned, and had the posts deleted, for stating the rights that an individual has as it was seen as "threatening" legal action, while I was simply pointing out that the posts being made were possibly defamatory and that the private citizen being abused could seek legal action.

I thinks it's possible that boards might find themselves in a legal conundrum when they moderate certain posts, i.e. defamation of an anonymous poster, but allow defamation of private citizens.

johnnyskeleton

Poster makes defamatory comments which are then deleted, but not before a few people see them - the poster is liable and boards.ie is not.

If a poster makes a defamatory comment which is allowed to continue for a long period of time despite moderators knowing it - poster is still liable but boards.ie could also be as well.

Hence the double policy that while you take responsibility for what you say on boards.ie, the site also needs to ensure that any potentially defamatory statement is removed as soon as possible.

Besides, leaving the law aside, the owners of boards.ie don't want it to become a platform for defaming people, so even if they could not be liable it is still against the sites rules to remove defamatory material.

Slyderx1

I seem to recall that Shakespeare allowed his fools to utter the truth in his plays..I always thought it strange that insanity is not a defence in defamation....something to consider on Boards.IE especially in this section.

NoQuarter

Slyderx1 wrote: »

I seem to recall that Shakespeare allowed his fools to utter the truth in his plays..I always thought it strange that insanity is not a defence in defamation....something to consider on Boards.IE especially in this section.

Could fall under honest belief.

hullaballoo

Tom Young wrote: »

No. S.I. 68 of 2003, Hosting Defence - Reg 18. 2000/31/EC ECommerce Directive. Liability accrues, potentially when knowledge does.

Mulvaney v The Sporting Exchange t/a. Betfair.

There's also the recent McKeogh v. The Internet [not listing all the defs] (albeit an interim injunction iirc.)

The law is anything but a world of absolutes. When it comes to the Internet and computers generally, there are too many what-ifs for anyone to say for sure. It seems that failing to act upon a complaint would be foolish if it has been brought to a moderator's attention.

(OT: In relation to the comments about being banned for threatening legal action, that's nothing to do with boards.ie's legal liability; it's just against the site's rules because it's fcuking stupid.)

murraykil

johnnyskeleton wrote: »

Poster makes defamatory comments which are then deleted, but not before a few people see them - the poster is liable and boards.ie is not.

If a poster makes a defamatory comment which is allowed to continue for a long period of time despite moderators knowing it - poster is still liable but boards.ie could also be as well.

Hence the double policy that while you take responsibility for what you say on boards.ie, the site also needs to ensure that any potentially defamatory statement is removed as soon as possible.

Besides, leaving the law aside, the owners of boards.ie don't want it to become a platform for defaming people, so even if they could not be liable it is still against the sites rules to remove defamatory material.

It's "against the sites rules to remove defamatory material"! :eek:

You raise an interesting point; what protection does the moderator have?

In the example I am referring too, the moderator removed only comments which were "defamatory" to an anonymous poster. This is someone who is using an alias, so in a sense they themselves are not really being defamed. Yet the posts which were defamatory to a real person who was pictured and named were allowed to remain.

Is the moderator making themsleves potentially liable with selective moderation? Since the moderator is an unpaid (beers? :pac: ) volunteer one would hope that they would not be liable or that boards would take ultimate repsonsibility.

hullaballoo wrote: »

...

(OT: In relation to the comments about being banned for threatening legal action, that's nothing to do with boards.ie's legal liability; it's just against the site's rules because it's fcuking stupid.)

If you are referring to the post I made then at make least make it an accurate referenece. There was no threat, I was merely pointing out the possible legal implications in the hope that posters would stop making such atrocias and in my opinion, defamatory remarks.

While you make think it's stupid, the victim might not think it's stupid and may have been unaware that they may be able to take legal recourse. I was also annoyed that anonymous posters were given protection by the moderator, one of the posters was even using racial slurs, while they allowed someone who was identified by name and with a photo to be abused.

hullaballoo

murraykil wrote: »

If you are referring to the post I made then at make least make it an accurate referenece...

No, I was referring to the rule against threatening legal action generally, which is actually usually a permanent site-ban. I haven't checked what your ban was for so I'm not going to comment on that in particular. In fact, even if I had checked, I still couldn't comment.

murraykil

hullaballoo wrote: »

No, I was referring to the rule against threatening legal action generally, which is actually usually a permanent site-ban. I haven't checked what your ban was for so I'm not going to comment on that in particular. In fact, even if I had checked, I still couldn't comment.

Ah, ok, it's just that you wrote "In relation to the comments about being banned for threatening legal action" so it didn't seem to be general.

Tom Young

hullaballoo wrote: »

There's also the recent McKeogh v. The Internet [not listing all the defs] (albeit an interim injunction iirc.)

The law is anything but a world of absolutes. When it comes to the Internet and computers generally, there are too many what-ifs for anyone to say for sure. It seems that failing to act upon a complaint would be foolish if it has been brought to a moderator's attention.

(OT: In relation to the comments about being banned for threatening legal action, that's nothing to do with boards.ie's legal liability; it's just against the site's rules because it's fcuking stupid.)

Judgment has been given in the interlocutory injunction.

The law is a lot more certain on this area, mostly based on CJEU jurisprudence, lest there be any differences of opinion on that.

Edit: I'm not suggesting there is btw. Just in case

Tom

hullaballoo

Tom Young wrote: »

Edit: I'm not suggesting there is btw. Just in case

Tom

No, it would be very rare for two lawyers to have a difference of opinion, of course. :pac: