The X Files ended yesterday. There's no conspiracy, not even any contact between us and those who might have been upset at a certain company about that thread.
However, there seems to be a general belief that you can say absolutely anything you want on the Internet free of reprecussions. This is not at all true. The libel and defamation laws apply to the Internet, too. People have been successfully sued for posting false information in forums.
American libel law is also a little odd in that the standard is different for "public figures" than private individuals. For the latter, just being wrong leaves you liable for damages.
In this particular instance, the company in question put out a press release disagreeing with the characterization of some of the involved companies as shell companies in an Internet post, pointed out several errors in fact as to the nature of the manufacturing facilities, and suggested some sort of financial link between the poster and other involved parties. The first is at least arguable, and the others appear to be at least generally true.
The response by the original poster was to state that a certain party identified only with asterisks had a criminal record based on certain Internet records and that further details would be released if this party didn't "back off." For all we know, those records may well be for a different person with the same name. What may be considered "proof" by someone in a computer hardware forum is not the same thing as proof in a court of law.
Even if such statements were true, the relevancy of such statements to the matter at hand is an unknown due to the vagueness of the allegation, and under certain circumstances might arguably be defamatory (for instance, let's say the alleged criminal record was for drunk driving, or marijuana use. That wouldn't be terribly relevant in what is a commercial issue).
In any case, it would seem to us that what the companies did or didn't do in the recent past is a lot more relevant than some unknown action somebody might have done sometime in the past.
(Nor are we interested in pursuing such a point, nor having anyone else pursue that particular point here. To us, what the companies did or didn't do in the recent past is important.)
To support such a stance, the poster presented a link which was supposed to be some sort of legal citation, but was nothing of the sort. Rather, it was some recommendations from press representatives as to getting access to certain public records, which has zero legal weight.
Now if the poster wishes to say such things at his own website and incur all legal liabilities, fine. However, we didn't volunteer for this, and no one else is going to volunteer us for legal disputes. We are not going to host comments that may be of a defamatory nature solely to further someone else's agenda. We decide whether or not something will be said which might have legal ramifications, not somebody else over whom we have no control (that's the main difference between this and a newspaper). Nor are we going to play legal staff for anybody; we don't have the time nor the money.
We don't know all the niceties of the various forms of defamation and libel, and we're not going to. We're a computer hardware site, not a legal defense fund. We do know the basics, though, and what we saw didn't look too good.
The law is still unsettled as to the liability of owners of forums. It is possible that had those messages continued to remain, we would be dragged into court over this issue. Win or lose, we'd still have to pay lawyers to defend ourselves over statements we didn't make, and had no control over.
If something like that ever is going to happen to us, it's going to be on a matter where the issue is important to us, where we have all the facts at hand, and where we are dead sure we are right according to the law. We're not going to put the continued existence of this website into question in a situation where someone else uses us to make statements in such a manner that even we find to be at least on shaky legal grounds.
There's a huge legal difference between someone saying, "I bought two sticks of memory from that place, and it didn't do what they promised. Boy that company stinks!" and someone saying "Mr. ******* ***** is a criminal." It is because of the second that the thread was pulled.
We don't think it's right for people to say things we would not say on the front page because it didn't meet our standards of proof and relevancy that could drag us into court.
Therefore, we won't, and we won't accept the second kind of statement or links to such statements here. Go over to the originator's site if you want to do that.
However, there seems to be a general belief that you can say absolutely anything you want on the Internet free of reprecussions. This is not at all true. The libel and defamation laws apply to the Internet, too. People have been successfully sued for posting false information in forums.
American libel law is also a little odd in that the standard is different for "public figures" than private individuals. For the latter, just being wrong leaves you liable for damages.
In this particular instance, the company in question put out a press release disagreeing with the characterization of some of the involved companies as shell companies in an Internet post, pointed out several errors in fact as to the nature of the manufacturing facilities, and suggested some sort of financial link between the poster and other involved parties. The first is at least arguable, and the others appear to be at least generally true.
The response by the original poster was to state that a certain party identified only with asterisks had a criminal record based on certain Internet records and that further details would be released if this party didn't "back off." For all we know, those records may well be for a different person with the same name. What may be considered "proof" by someone in a computer hardware forum is not the same thing as proof in a court of law.
Even if such statements were true, the relevancy of such statements to the matter at hand is an unknown due to the vagueness of the allegation, and under certain circumstances might arguably be defamatory (for instance, let's say the alleged criminal record was for drunk driving, or marijuana use. That wouldn't be terribly relevant in what is a commercial issue).
In any case, it would seem to us that what the companies did or didn't do in the recent past is a lot more relevant than some unknown action somebody might have done sometime in the past.
(Nor are we interested in pursuing such a point, nor having anyone else pursue that particular point here. To us, what the companies did or didn't do in the recent past is important.)
To support such a stance, the poster presented a link which was supposed to be some sort of legal citation, but was nothing of the sort. Rather, it was some recommendations from press representatives as to getting access to certain public records, which has zero legal weight.
Now if the poster wishes to say such things at his own website and incur all legal liabilities, fine. However, we didn't volunteer for this, and no one else is going to volunteer us for legal disputes. We are not going to host comments that may be of a defamatory nature solely to further someone else's agenda. We decide whether or not something will be said which might have legal ramifications, not somebody else over whom we have no control (that's the main difference between this and a newspaper). Nor are we going to play legal staff for anybody; we don't have the time nor the money.
We don't know all the niceties of the various forms of defamation and libel, and we're not going to. We're a computer hardware site, not a legal defense fund. We do know the basics, though, and what we saw didn't look too good.
The law is still unsettled as to the liability of owners of forums. It is possible that had those messages continued to remain, we would be dragged into court over this issue. Win or lose, we'd still have to pay lawyers to defend ourselves over statements we didn't make, and had no control over.
If something like that ever is going to happen to us, it's going to be on a matter where the issue is important to us, where we have all the facts at hand, and where we are dead sure we are right according to the law. We're not going to put the continued existence of this website into question in a situation where someone else uses us to make statements in such a manner that even we find to be at least on shaky legal grounds.
There's a huge legal difference between someone saying, "I bought two sticks of memory from that place, and it didn't do what they promised. Boy that company stinks!" and someone saying "Mr. ******* ***** is a criminal." It is because of the second that the thread was pulled.
We don't think it's right for people to say things we would not say on the front page because it didn't meet our standards of proof and relevancy that could drag us into court.
Therefore, we won't, and we won't accept the second kind of statement or links to such statements here. Go over to the originator's site if you want to do that.
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