Kicking off the debate about free speech
The legal system is starting to get to grips with chat on the internet, says regular columnist Bill Thompson

A row about comments left on the site has ended in the courts
Three Sheffield Wednesday supporters who posted anonymous abusive comments on the "Owlstalk" website will be staring into their cornflakes this morning as they wonder whether they will soon be receiving a libel writ in the post.

The football club has obtained an order from the High Court requiring the site's administrators to hand over the e-mail addresses of the three fans.

Although the posters used pseudonyms and may have thought that they were safe from any legal action, they may now be tracked down after deputy Judge Richard Parkes agreed that their posts "may reasonably be understood to allege greed, selfishness, untrustworthiness and dishonest behaviour on the part of the claimants".

This leaves them open to proceedings for libel, so the judge has told site owner Neil Hargreaves to reveal their e-mail addresses despite the site's privacy policy.

Of course nobody should assume that user names offer any real anonymity or protection against legal action against a site's host, whether here or in China, so if the three people involved didn't go to the trouble of registering non-UK addresses just to use on Owlstalk their real names will soon be known to the lawyers acting for the directors.

The consequences could be severe, as we now have a reasonable body of case law establishing that something you say online is just as likely to get you sued as something you print.

And while service providers and hosting companies may be able to claim immunity from prosecution under the EU directive on e-commerce those who write and publish the material are increasingly likely to find themselves hearing from the lawyers.

Three years ago the Sunday Herald paid damages to former defence secretary George Robertson in an out of court settlement after Mr Robertson said he had been libelled on the paper's message boards.


Most of us, most of the time, know the difference between abuse and moaning, so we should not see this case as the end of online anonymity.

Bill Thompson

Since then there have been many other cases, including the dispute between childcare writer Gina Ford and the Mumsnet site which ended with the site paying Ms Ford compensation. Another recent case involved a threatening letter from the law firm Schillings on behalf of Russian businessman Alisher Usmanov which resulted in the suspension of several blogs.

Back in September I chaired a two-day conference with the rather unpromising title "User Generated Content and the Law in the Modern Legal Environment".

It was a conference for lawyers, who clearly don't need to be enticed by snappy headlines, and featured a range of speakers who understood how the law was being applied online.

I can remember when commentators routinely described the internet as "lawless", a new frontier where existing legal principles simply could not be applied.

Some of the more hopelessly romantic, like John Perry Barlow, even declared that "cyberspace" was a new realm, independent of the physical world.

They were wrong at the time, but it was true that lawyers and judges were struggling to fit this new medium into the framework of existing law.

Now, it is clear, they have pretty much completed the task and there is no justification for believing that our online activities are in any sense outside the frameworks of regulation and control that govern the rest of our lives.

The stereotype of the uninformed, out-of-date judge issuing incomprehensible pronouncements from the bench is no longer sustainable.


The net is now judged by laws that apply offline too
Mr Justice Parkes, presiding over the Owlstalk case, certainly seems to have a sound understanding of the way online debate often goes beyond what would be considered acceptable in polite conversation, and has done us a service by drawing a fairly clear line.

While the e-mail addresses of the three fans have to be handed over, he refused an application to disclose the e-mail addresses of a further eight posters because their comments were "plainly intended as jokes and unlikely to be taken seriously".

He reckons they were "no more than saloon-bar moanings about the way in which the club is managed".

Most of us, most of the time, know the difference between abuse and moaning, so we should not see this case as the end of online anonymity. It is not going to force every website, bulletin board or mailing list to insist on proof of identity, a blood sample and a letter from two grandparents before you can sign up.

It won't have a chilling effect on the sort of raucous debate many of us enjoy on our favourite discussion sites, and it does not diminish the protection someone might expect if they are posting deeply personal or sensitive material under a pseudonym.

Of course, it isn't perfect. The judgment doesn't rule out the possibility of a thin-skinned person taking offence and dragging a small community site into the courts over postings which they really should just ignore.

And it doesn't change the law that encourages hosting companies simply to pull any content after they receive a complaint, as Fasthosts did when Mr Usmanov complained about blog postings about his past.

But it should help anyone who posts online decide whether what they are about to say crosses the line, and ensure that anyone who decides to go for the jugular realises that their carefully-selected username will not really help them when it comes to court.

get ready for the courts getting clogged up in years to come with these cases, once people know their "rights" and how to go about finding a lawyer who can sue someone on their behalf.
There'll be no need to trip up over a paving stone any more to get money, just "decide" that someone has "offended" you on the internet and sue them!!!!!

I hereby declare my taking offence at everyone who called me a fat parmo-eating bastard and I declare my intention to sue those people on here who have upset me so much, I've lost 10 stone and can't face eating any more parmos.
The fact that the statements are true and that my health has improved is not the point, I'm greedy for money that I don't deserve and I want it now.

So there.

Those concerned will be hearing from my solicitors Emerson, Lake and Palmer first thing Monday morning.

Don't forget that it does depend on what information that the website holds.

Say for example that I as webmaster of this place recieved a demand for details of a poster. In the first instance I would politely decline to supply the information. Then I would receive a court summons, go to court and be instructed to supply names and addresses. Eventually I would have to supply names and addresses.

However I don't have them. I have email addresses and I have IP addresses so everyone could be traced. Networks generally ask for your name and address upfront.

The trick is I guess not to get into the situation in the first place. Don't accuse anyone wealthy of anything that you cannot prove or cannot afford to prove That last bit is just as important; libel is not just about the truth, its about what you can afford to prove or defend.

Simply only allow authorised members

People who arent gonna sue over a stupid arguement etc

oh crap i withdraw everything i have said about our illustrious mp and i now realise he is hardworking(trying to sort the buses)and agreeing with everything this government ordains(it,s hard being a yes man)and it,s also hard having no scruples

Oh no, its beyond arguement that he's a snivelling Gordon Brown-nose.

Bingo!

As proven in certain cases well known to us in the past.

It's not new though - one of our illustrious former managers springs to mind

Gordon Brown - texture like sun.

Never a frown with Gordon Brown.

Right, lads Poolie Special Deal

It's only five pound a pop to register yourselves at our house!! (Calculates 450 members at 5 quid..........books holiday in Maldives....).

You twat- I was thinking just that before I got down to your post.

Tell you what, register me there as a freebie and I'll sort the admin out for the rest from over here...

Done!!!

As a now-retired Site Owner (and hence Forum Mod) the only thing here that is surprising is that it's taken this long for a case like the Owlstalk one to arise and hit the press. Technically there's never particularly been a reason why Libel laws shouldn't apply to the net, if it hasn't happened on a grand scale before it's because people haven't been so aware of it, have regarded the net as unimportant, or have thought it technically too difficult. There's another case ongoing at the moment for example where someone has smeared a business rival thinking it was anonymous - only for the lawyers in question to spent a large amount of time researching and tracking it back to him, so that he's now been forced to admit it and faces paying 250K of costs alone. Money is of course a big factor - it has been for a long time though, Maxwell squashed a lot of stuff for a long time by putting out the writs back in the 80s.

The solution is for people generally to have a bit of sense. Just because it's online doesn't mean it's OK, and there are means out there (technical and legal) to track you down if someone is sufficiently motivated/rich. Of course, as per Maxwell, the fact it might be true doesn't mean someone won't try it on either.... however other options (false/disposable email addresses, hosting boards out of jurisdiction etc) are not necessarily guarantees of being able to avoid trouble.....

They even traced one bloke from the CCTV in the Internet Cafe. So a remote computer is not the answer either.

So, time to consider my offer to register here in the deepest Orient for a reasonable 5 quid!!

They can contact your agent for more details...

Travel Agent?

They did things much better in the Middle Ages. Under feudal law you were liable to be tried for an offence if you were simply accused of committing it, by two other people.
Apparently, even if you were then found innocent, you were still evicted from your village on grounds of being in ill-repute with your neighbours

Sounds like the collieries.............