Fair Warning

[HenryBHough]

Those who post hate against Governor Sarah Palin beware.

You MAY cause this site to be prosecuted!

Provided even a single reader is in France.

BBC News - Sanction tech firms over hate speech says Hollande

"Francois Hollande called for a legal framework and sanctions to make them 'face up to their responsibilities'."


"Mr Hollande said: 'We must act on a European and even an international level so that a legal framework can be defined, and that the online platforms that run the social networks are made to face up to their responsibilities, and that sanctions are imposed when they do not'."

Now, anybody certain that I'm not in France just now?

 

[rightwinger]

Pointing out that Palin is a fucking moron is not hate

 

[tinydancer]

I've been warning people to be very careful what they post even about public figures.

Free Dominion got nailed in Canada big time and is now permanently closed.

Posters feel they can say whatever they want about a public figure. Au contraire. Do so at your risk on the net these days.

 

[Nutz]

I've been warning people to be very careful what they post even about public figures.

Free Dominion got nailed in Canada big time and is now permanently closed.

Posters feel they can say whatever they want about a public figure. Au contraire. Do so at your risk on the net these days.

Sweetie, this is not canada.

 

[JWBooth]

Let me take this opportunity to say, as politely as I can manage, fuck France with an ArabJewAggieChinkCanukPorchMonkeyBitchWhoreButchDykeFagPalinHilleryRomney purple dildo.

Stupid ass statist pricks.

 

[tinydancer]

It was an awesome message board. This hurt.

Some fairly important news out of Canada last week. Richard Warman closed down the Free Dominion website through litigation via the Human Rights Commission. There is the threat of jail now for the two very nice people who ran it.

Here is Mark Steyn article from 2012 about the execrable Richard Warman.

This is what Free Dominion said:

As of today, January 23, 2014, and after 13 years online, Free Dominion is closing its doors to the public. We have been successfully censored.

Today, Ontario Superior Court Justice Robert Smith issued an order in the Richard Warman vs Mark and Connie Fournier and John Does defamation case heard September, 2013.

In addition to ordering that we must pay Warman $127,000, Justice Smith issued an injunction against us ordering we that never publish, or allow to be published, anything negative about Richard Warman.

This means we are barred for life from ever operating a public forum or a blog (even about cookie recipes) where the public can comment.

If we do so, any one of Warman’s handful of supporters could, and probably would, use a common proxy server to avoid being traced, plant a negative comment about Warman on our site, and we would both be charged with contempt of court. If that happened — unlike in the Ottawa courtroom where we blocked at every turn from presenting a defense — we actually would have no defense.

We would both go to jail. This life sentence was imposed for our terrible crimes of voicing our honestly held beliefs and allowing others to do the same

Defamation law, in its current state, is entirely inadequate and counterproductive when applied to the internet. Now it is being used as a tool of censorship. Effectively!

We are assessing our options.

In faith,
Mark and Connie Fournier

Important note here:

All Free Dominion did was link to a Mark Steyn article and then there were comments on it disparaging Warman.

You are being redirected...

 

[Nutz]

This ain't canada, sweetie. Take your tears to the canadian forum.

 

[tinydancer]

I've been warning people to be very careful what they post even about public figures.

Free Dominion got nailed in Canada big time and is now permanently closed.

Posters feel they can say whatever they want about a public figure. Au contraire. Do so at your risk on the net these days.

Sweetie, this is not canada.

Sadly message boards in the States are going to be moving targets as well. Now the defendants that run this message board prevailed but they still had to spend time and money defending themselves against a defamation lawsuit. More at the link.

Message board sued for user-posted message

When does the president of a corporation have to get his own coffee?

When he and his business partner are the only employees.

“In a startup like ours, there’s two employees, so we do everything,” says Chris Moser, president of Network 54, an Internet service which hosts message boards, blogs, chat rooms, and other online communities.

“We do the finances, we act as the CFO, we act as marketing, we do the programming, we run the servers, we do everything that’s involved in running the business.”

Chris’ site gets about 5 million visitors a month, so there’s plenty to keep him and his partner busy – including a lawsuit.

“We had some legal papers arrive at our office that was a lawsuit for $800 million dollars,” says Chris. “It was a little bit shocking to get it.”

“We were being sued for libel and slander and defamation and conspiracy by a strawberry farmer in Florida,” he says. “He found us out by finding a message posted about him on one of our message boards. We heard nothing from him and he basically sued us right off the bat.”

It turned out that the lawsuit against Chris was related to another lawsuit the farmer had filed.

“He was involved in a lawsuit against the German National Bank trying to collect on these pre-World War II gold bonds that they had been collecting and buying off of various sources.”

“Someone else posted a message on our site that allegedly defamed him,” says Chris. “When this message was posted on our system, I don’t know if he Googled it, I don’t know how he came to find it, but somehow he found this message about himself on our Internet site – a forum that was hosted by us.”

“Allegedly we were conspiring to slander him to affect the outcome of his other suit. He thought that we were involved in a conspiracy with the German National Bank, Commerce Bank, John Hancock Insurance, and a few other entities.”

“It was unbelievable. Just the context of the case was outrageous. It was just out there. It was like a drive-by lawsuit almost.”

“We needed to get representation both in California to respond immediately and in Florida,” Chris says. “We knew that the law was on our side and that was probably the best thing going into it.”

It took about five months, but eventually the plaintiff dropped his case against Network 54.

“At the end of it all, it just was a lot of time and a lot of money spent on something that was completely unnecessary.”

“Time is the most valuable thing you have when you’re running a business and to have something like this take away your time, really it’s taking away the most important thing you have to run a business.”

Chris has learned a few lessons from the experience.

“You realize that you might have to spend money on something that’s completely unnecessary. My business partner put it as a cost of doing business. It seems silly that we are the ones that have to pay for someone else’s shot at maybe making a lot of money.”

“You could be right on the law and you could still be in jeopardy,” says Chris. “That doesn’t stop people from suing you and involving you in the cost of defending yourself from a lawsuit.”

Message board sued for user-posted message Faces of Lawsuit Abuse

 

[Nutz]

tinydancer Apples to oranges. That case will go nowhere...just a lawyer listing a bunch of defendants in search of a pay day. And just because it is the internet...why shouldn't publishers be held to the same standard as traditional publishers? Billions of dollars are spend every year by companies and people trying to defend themselves from outrageous attacks made on 'anonymous' social media sites. Why shouldn't the website owner be held accountable if he/ she allows it to be published. In the end, it isn't an attack on free speech...it is an attack on libel and slander.

 

[Tom Sweetnam]

Thank God for TOR.

FYI: Vladimir Putin offered a $500,000 reward last year for any Russian citizen who could crack TOR. Apparently he was tired of political criticism from people who were smart enough to anonymize. He claimed his motive was Islamic terrorism. Right.

 

[tinydancer]

Well cases are being won. My point has always been on a message board by all means slag away and call <fill in the blank> an asshole or any other generic derogatory term.

But don't go calling someone anything that can be labelled as libel. You then end up potentially hurting the message board you are posting on.

Personal responsibility and all that.

Here's another good link to show what's happening out there in the world of cyber libel cases in America.

US cases on cyber libel in message boards and forums

Don Burleson

US cases on cyber libel in message boards and forums

 

[Nutz]

Well cases are being won. My point has always been on a message board by all means slag away and call <fill in the blank> an asshole or any other generic derogatory term.

But don't go calling someone anything that can be labelled as libel. You then end up potentially hurting the message board you are posting on.

Personal responsibility and all that.

Here's another good link to show what's happening out there in the world of cyber libel cases in America.

US cases on cyber libel in message boards and forums

Don Burleson

US cases on cyber libel in message boards and forums

Again...it is LIBEL. Websites are responsible for what they publish.