Quote:
Originally Posted by Cloud  More than likely. I wasn't going to say anything, but his threats of litigation really do deserve treated with the contempt that they deserve. It's always the line brought out with people with absolutely no experience of the legal system - and anyone who has even a passing interest in law knows that the threats are absolutely hollow. It's one thing when a company like Microsoft or the BPI threaten you - because they've got the money to drag you through the courts until you submit from how much it's costing you. But 'Redland' don't have the money to do it - and I doubt they could afford to even bring such a case to court in the first place.
Even obtaining the personal details of people posting to this site would surely cost quite a bit of money in obtaining the relevant court order - and what would they get except details of IP addresses and publicly viewable information? Then you'd be looking at a court order to force the ISP to reveal who '212.22.35.215' is - which again wouldn't be cheap, as the ISP would fight any such order to avoid setting a precedent. |
As an aside, this is something we've tried to deal with carefully on the web site as unfortunately the threats of legal action do occasionally come across our way.
For those interested, the disclaimer the web site has (and what you have all agreed to accept by registering on the site) removes any liability the web site (i.e. me) has for the content of anything posted either publically or privately anywhere on the site. We'll remove specific content if asked, but that's normally as far as we would go.
It's the author of the post or private message that is wholly responsible for it's content. We could be forced to handover what information we have recorded for a specific member (IP addresses, e-mail address, location etc). This would be required if they needed to be properly indentified in order for legal action to be taken out against them by a third party. But we would only ever do this under the instruction of the relevant authorities and with the relevant warrant issued by court. In all the years this web site has been online this has yet to ever happen, thankfully.
Please do be careful with what you post about other people and organisations though. People can and do get taken to court for things like defamation because of making posts on message boards, news groups, social networks etc. Although you might think you are doing it anonymously, there really is no such thing. An IP address and an e-mail address are more than enough to identify a person if needs be.
Anyway, good thread this. Back to the topic at hand...