Internet slanging match ends up in High Court
March 24, 2006

The dark side of the blogosphere was revealed by a libel action brought by Michael Keith-Smith, a former Conservative Party member who stood for the United Kingdom Independence Party in Portsmouth North, on the south coast of England, at the last election.

He said he was moved to sue after a woman with whom he was debating the merits of military action in Iraq began a campaign of name-calling that started by describing him as "lard brain" and culminated in labelling him a "Nazi", a "racist bigot" and a "nonce".

Judge Alistair MacDuff in the High Court ordered Tracy Williams, a college lecturer from Oldham, in north-west England, to pay £10,000 ($24,000) in damages, plus Mr Keith-Smith's £7200 costs, and told never to repeat the allegations.

The case is one of the first of its kind between two private individuals to go to court, said lawyers. It highlighted issues that would become more prominent as internet use continued to grow and blogging, social networking and community sites became yet more popular, they said.

Mr Keith-Smith said he took action after a debate about the Iraq war in 2003 on a Yahoo! message board with about 100 members turned ugly.

"She was very pro-[US President George] Bush. Initially, she called me lard brain and I wasn't particularly concerned about that. Then she called me a Nazi," he said.

He has also taken action against a second poster, he said, with whom he claimed to have settled for a sum "in the region of £30,000".

"They started saying I was on a sex offenders' list and that people shouldn't let me near their children," said Mr Keith-Smith, who is also chairman of the Conservative Democratic Alliance, which bills itself as "the leading voice of the radical Tory right".

Legal experts said the case should be taken as a warning to the millions of people debating contentious issues on message boards, in chatrooms and on their own blogs.

The Guardian

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/internet-slanging-match-ends-up-in-high-court/2006/03/23/1143083906475.html

Publicly calling someone a sex offender can be very damaging. But I don't worry what names people call me because old-reb is not my real name.

that is insane... Calling a person a sex offender could cause damage to their reputation, but how far is that from calling someone dirty names. Is it possible that I could be sued for calling someone a cheap ****** (fill in any insult here).
I think they took it a little too far. If it was a company that was losing customers due to slander, then I would agree to suing them.

The only part of the lawsuit I could agree with was when that poor guy started being called a sex offender by his tormentor. That can do a world of damage that he may never entirely recover from. Everything else should've been handled by a moderator long before this flame war wound up in a court of law, dammit.

I think it's just as well we all stay anonymous around here. You can't sue whom you can't identify, can you? I wonder, though, how far-fetched it is to imagine a time when someone like Drew might be compelled by subpoena to provide the member information of a party to a lawsuit like this.

What I never understand is this 'sueing' business.The woman in question isnt gonna think hes NOT a nazi,just because she has to pay up,so whats the point,surely its his duty to presuede her he isnt one,thru debating his corner..

The internet has become a public forum and certain things that may not be said in other public fora with impunity may not be said on the internet with impunity.

The charge of sexual deviancy or being a sexual offender is a charge that by its very nature falls into a special category. Once the charge is presented it can never be fully retracted. There is always the hint of doubt or even outright belief in the minds of some.

Were someone to start a campaign to have me portrayed as a sexual offender you can be assured that they would be contacted by my lawyer. If a moderator allowed someone to do so they also would be contacted by my lawyer as would the owner of the site.

Certain accusations rise to such a level that they cannot be allowed to stand unchallenged or if untrue, unpunished.

But as you say frogger,once someone has started an attack on a individual even if its retracted the element of doubt to a certain extent remains,so im curious how financial compensation clears up the issue.

If you do not go after the attacker with all weapons at your disposal you are lending credence to the accusations.

If you sue the pants off him/her, that person will be punished for his/her transgressions and will not dare to do something similar again.



I have checked into a situation very similar to this and in the event someone started a chat room campaign to have someone declared a sexual offender the suit would be heard and probably won. There is already legal precedence.

Fair enough,without naming names or places,give us a brieff run of the case you refer to..

What worries me even more than some of these lawsuits are the blogs people post which contain WAY too much personal info about themselves--they are setting themselves up for on-line predators.

Don't make it easy for them---don't be dumb.

I used to participate in another chat room, a chat room that has since self destructed due to the failure of the owner of the site, who acted as sole administrator, to stop the incessant flame wars.

Two posters began a campaign to have a third poster declared a pedophile. They began a months long campaign complete with fake emails this third poster supposedly sent to a young woman in Great Britain. After awhile other posters began referring to the third poster as a pedophile.

When the two initiators were asked to stop they increased their campaign and added additional fake emails. The owner/administrator was asked publically to put a stop to the behavior and delete the long list of offending posts. He did neither.

Lawyers were contacted and only after the threat of legal action did the campaing come to an end. In this case the libel was not posted across international boundaries and the real identies of the two people who began the campaign and the administrator were known.

Sounds like a lively chatroom,I can see were some form of 'rules' can and must be inplace to restrict this behaviour,maybe a software of somekind.

If not software, suing the bastards and taking their money.

Haha,unfortunatly youll find a lot of people couldnt afford to pay the settlement,and if the accuser is living outside the jurisdiction,it would prove difficult to enforce..