The situation as I understand it is as follows. Comments about a professor
of physics (I will see if I can dig his name up) were posted in a chat room
hosted by Demon, a UK internet provider, anonymously. The claim was made
that the comments were libellous and that Demon did nothing to remove them.
Therefore, the internet provider, or rather the parent company was judged to
be responsible and damages of £250 000 were awarded. Personally, I do not
think we need to worry about this but I was just curious as to what others
thought about the possible issues for using the internet.
Geoff Hayward
Lecturer in Educational Studies and SKOPE Research Fellow
University of Oxford
Department of Educational Studies
15 Norham Gardens
Oxford
OX2 6PY
Phone: 01865 274007
Fax: 01865 274024
-----Original Message-----
From: Eva Ekeblad [mailto:eva.ekeblad@ped.gu.se]
Sent: 04 April 2000 15:38 PM
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: Re: libelous comments
At 20.13 +0100 0-04-03, Geoff Hayward scrobe:
>Have colleagues heard about the court case here where a professor of
physics
>has just sued one of the internet providers for libelous comments made
about
>him in one of the chatrooms sponsored by demon.
Only vaguely, and I'm not even sure it was the same case.
So I'm wondering if you know if this prof was IN the chat where he was
slandered, or if he "overheard" people "talking" about him... and if so
HOW. I mean - libelous comments in a chatroom... I thought Net chat was
ephemeral but maybe I'm just not updated on how web chat environments
function...
Lot's of questions about the specific situation in order to know just how
to apply the law to it, right?
>What are the implications of
>this for communities like this one?
Oh... that the community lives dangerously at all times. It just takes ONE
participant (or nonparticipant, for that matter) in the position to invoke
the Law, AND with an inclination to do so.... vulnerable thingies these
environments as soon as trust is breached.
However, I wonder, who would be available for suing in the case of XMCA?
The UCSD???
Eva
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue May 23 2000 - 09:21:12 PDT