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What happens to some of the new threads (and business participation on EuroGA)

Hmmm… I don’t think so, certainly not in the UK and probably most countries in Europe.

With a court order the authorities can get everything which the organisation – assuming it has assets in the said country – is able to technically provide. So for example they can get sms, call logs, phone location from gsm (the aforementioned are logged and stored for ever), email (smtp) logs, android phone track logs from google, etc. This is standard stuff, essential to law enforcement. And the intelligence agencies can get it anyway, sometimes via moles in the main organisations

The terms of a court order will also include nondisclosure otherwise the criminal would be alerted to the surveillance.

I don’t know the procedures for civil cases. I would imagine that would be harder. But in some countries the two are mixed up e.g. the anon.penet / interpol case in Finland. I have also been told that in France the police deal with libel, which must create some awfully interesting situations since it took 15 of them to check passports at LFAT.

But this is mostly digressing. If you run a website where anybody can post whatever negative stuff they want, you will get sued simply because a small number of individuals will be running various grievances, some against the said company (plenty of those, though mostly not independently verifiable without spending a lot of time on it) and some against the (any) forum which is moderated (grievances against the mods) or unmoderated (grievances against the local lynch mob that dominates the sites which are ostensibly unmoderated). I’ve been on forums for 20+ years and seen it all… Within an hour of EuroGA starting up we had a post which would have had the police round had it been left in place (obviously we were expecting trouble, back then). It’s the kind of hassle which people want to be paid to sort out

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Peter wrote:

Google, Tripadvisor, etc are not good examples of what one can get away with because they have loads of money and top lawyers and they have the resources to deal with anything that comes up, and settle behind the scenes as required. And anybody serious will get a court order forcing Google etc to reveal the identity of the poster (or even just the IP used, which will lead to a court order on the ISP to dig out which account had that IP at that time) and then the attacker goes after the poster, or both. I bet you anything these companies have a very busy legal department

… and very transparent reports on what they reveal to the government (I have been working in this industry for a very long time) which is exactly zilch – zero – nothing. You are however right – governments (and the UK government is a prime example along with the US) will always bully you into trying to reveal. Hence my comment on a commendable non profit service like EUROGA not wanting the hassle. In David and your shoes – I would take the exact same decision you are taking. If this were a commercial business – I would say bring it on :-)

LFHN - Bellegarde - Vouvray France

I would like some advertising​ actually. From Sonex and Vans forums, those adverts on the side of the page is where I have got most of my knowledge of retail shops etc. You can always use Google to search, but an ad on those sites works like a kind of filter also. The ad wouldn’t be there if they weren’t targeting that particular group of people.

On this site though, I’m not entirely sure what the target group is, or what kind of merchandise and services are sought after (except the obvious, moving maps, headsets etc). But the ones placing ads here would of course know.

The elephant is the circulation
ENVA ENOP ENMO, Norway

@LFHNflightstudent

The law on this varies by country. My vague knowledge of the UK situation (which is what would probably apply to EuroGA) is that provided the forum takes down a comment following a complaint, the forum is not usually liable. But who wants to test this? I am not watching the forum 24/7…

Google, Tripadvisor, etc are not good examples of what one can get away with because they have loads of money and top lawyers and they have the resources to deal with anything that comes up, and settle behind the scenes as required. And anybody serious will get a court order forcing Google etc to reveal the identity of the poster (or even just the IP used, which will lead to a court order on the ISP to dig out which account had that IP at that time) and then the attacker goes after the poster, or both. I bet you anything these companies have a very busy legal department

But I think the main factor in GA is that most people will refrain from posting negative reviews because they want to maintain a relationship, and GA is a very small world. Almost every GA company in Europe reads EuroGA, and the rest will get alerted to something by someone else who reads it. And positive reviews of a company which has say a 25% “happy customer” rate (I can think of a number of those) aren’t worth a lot, but would look credible if published on an apparently reputable site like EuroGA. So there are just too many issues, I think.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Peter wrote:

Great one-liner there, and like most one-liners it is wrong. Anyway, everybody knows exactly what I was referring to. But I learn something every day… didn’t know that in Sweden one cannot obtain a court order

It was tongue-in-cheek of course, but it is a fact that the UK is known for having libel laws that in practise are favourable for the claimant. E.g. in many countries it is not possible for a legal person to sue for libel.

The expression “libel tourism” is also well known, meaning that people sue for libel in the UK because they wouldn’t stand a chance in their own country — although I understand that the English law was changed recently to make libel tourism more difficult.

ESKC (Uppsala/Sundbro), Sweden

Peter wrote:

Great one-liner there, and like most one-liners it is wrong. Anyway, everybody knows exactly what I was referring to. But I learn something every day… didn’t know that in Sweden one cannot obtain a court order

Not saying I disagree with volunteers – on a non profit based service (a great one at that) being VERY careful. Frankly I understand you don’t want the grief.

However – for professional services – there is VERY little risk of the host of the comment to ever be convicted of anything. Facebook, Google – and Yahoo when they were still the dominant player – as long as they do not profile themselves as a publisher have NEVER been convicted of libel.
There would be no Uber, no Trip Advisor or any of these other services if there was a case to be made for them being liable to prosecution.

LFHN - Bellegarde - Vouvray France

Basically any country except the UK…

Great one-liner there, and like most one-liners it is wrong. Anyway, everybody knows exactly what I was referring to. But I learn something every day… didn’t know that in Sweden one cannot obtain a court order

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Peter wrote:

If you want a website where businesses can be criticised, it needs to be hosted in say Russia

Basically any country except the UK…

ESKC (Uppsala/Sundbro), Sweden

Anybody can sue if they feel they have suffered a loss.

If you want to go down that road, you better be either very rich or very poor

If you want a website where businesses can be criticised, it needs to be hosted in say Russia Consequently every forum, even those “marketed” as unmoderated, are of necessity moderated.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Out of curiosity, what’s the legal argument they have to threaten you?

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