Legal Threat from Switch Media. Please do not refer to them again here. Ever.

Gas. I read that yesterday and actually thought well of sm for stating their case and expressing a willingness to work out any issues with said customer rather than getting litigous. I thought their reference to libel was a fair point, and effective as the OP then removed the original remarks based on the clarified situation. Problem solved, or so it seemed.

An action against boards would inevitably be deleterious to its operation and thereby the benefits it provides to a large community of members. The implications of that bigger picture seems lost on them. If they are wise they'll apologise for the hasty over-reaction, and a donation to boards would demonstrate their csr credentials.

Gordon wrote:

The poster that posted about this company immediately deleted his own comments as soon as the company replied with a complaint, as democrates said.

It's a shame that this happened. More so for that particular company. They now have no avenue for showing good business practices on boards, unlike some other Irish Hosts.

I'll keep an eye out for them and make sure they don't come back also.

Cool, I am sure they will be posting in Personal Issues on how mean boards.ie is

DeVore wrote:

Ph3n0m, its cool. I got this one covered.

democrates, if they had approached this reasonably this would have gone a different way. Pointing a lawyer at me on day 1 is NOT the way reasonable people go about business. Its the way bullies who dont want something aired go about things.

I had a quick check of who they are too. http://www.whoisireland.com/IEDRresellers/IEDRresellers-class-A.php
Interesting reading, typically English people coming here threatening Irish people hasnt worked out great in the past.

DeV.

I have an inkling of what it's like from both sides. MS legal representatives used to send me letters warning of dire consequences if I wasn't compliant with their licences, and some crap about the bsa. They really have no idea how this type of behaviour impacts the recipient and their future decisions, I find that absolutely astounding. As my grandfather used to say, friends come and go, but enemies accumulate.

At the same time I'm in business and I have had to defend my ground on boards before against an unjustified attack (from my perspective), I was incensed and posted that if I wasn't anonymous I'd sue for libel. But in hindsight I was dead wrong on that point. (I also regretted it getting so sour as it wasn't in the spirit of boards and the other poster is an excellent boards member whose posts I enjoy - when I'm not at the receiving end!). But anyway, the fact is, if I posted under my business name I'd be like flippin' Ghandi, as I am when dealing with customers and potential customers. As my grandmother used to say, never show your teeth in public.

That's what's most surprising here, a big company doing something so ill-judged. The only possible remaining issue might have been to request a change to the title of the thread so that people who saw it but didn't read it to see the sm side wouldn't be left with a bad impression, no biggie, just a pm to a mod or a phone call from a human. But instead of being clever and turning the situation into a positive, they've threatened a legal attack unless the entire thread was suppressed, and so caused far more damage to their reputation themselves than the op could have if he had not deleted his posts.

I guess it's easy for me to propose a path to reconciliation as I didn't receive the threat, I know if I were in your shoes DeV they'd have their work cut out if they wanted to redeem themselves, but it would be possible.

Proving yet again that boards.ie, specifically that webmaster forum is not "insert company's name" support area

Zascar wrote:

Wow, even Tom Rafferty is talking about it!

Careful now, could be another O'Reilly style lawsuit