Archived from groups: rec.photo.digital.slr-systems (
More info?)
On Mon, 07 Feb 2005 17:01:30 GMT, JC Dill <jcdill04@sonic.net> wrote:
>On Mon, 07 Feb 2005 20:25:06 +1000, Ryadia <ryadia@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>>Henry Law wrote:
>>> On Mon, 07 Feb 2005 06:47:14 +1000, Ryadia <ryadia@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>Today, I am instructing my lawyers to take action against Google as the
>>>>publisher of slander and defamation.
>>>
>>>
>>> Don't be an idiot, man.
>>
>>Now if you'd said I was a fool, I could have seen the "money soon
>>parted" inference but to suggest I'm an idiot for defending a principal
>>that I have a legal right to sue for damages when someone slanders or
>>defames me or my wife, is to say you really couldn't give a hoot if some
>>one did it to you. Do you?
>
>Yes, you have a legal right to sue, but you are trying to sue the
>wrong entity. You don't sue the power company for a flyer posted on
>the power pole. You have to find and sue the author of the flyer.
>Usenet is just a huge public place to post things, with the data
>copied to thousands of servers around the world, some archive the data
>for hours or days (most ISPs), others archive it for years (e.g.
>DejaNews/Google).
>
>>FWIW I've already spent the cost of a small car in trying to discover
>>the identity of the person responsible...
>
>Why? What is so important about an apparently-anonymous usenet post
>that you are going to these extremes?
>
>>Cadillac's are not all that
>>much more! Besides, I have the advise of a QC that my case has merit and
>>an offer to appear in court for no more cost than I recover from the
>>court as costs. It is going to happen.
>
>You are going to waste a lot of money and lose. Your QC (whatever
>that is) either doesn't know about or doesn't understand usenet and is
>giving you poor advice.
>
>Instead of suing Google you should be suing John Doe and then
>subpoenaing Google for records and following the trace back (using
>subpoenas as needed) until it can't be followed anymore. When you
>reach the spot where the trace can't be followed anymore, claim THAT
>entity is your John Doe, asserting that unless they can prove an
>identifiable someone else posted it that they are responsible. Hold
>them responsible for the post that came from their server if they
>won't give up who sent it to THEM.
>
>IMHO there should be no system to post anonymously to usenet, but it's
>going to take suing each entity that runs an anonymizer (or who
>otherwise refuses to disclose who transmitted the info to them) to get
>those services stopped. It's not Google's fault that anonymizers
>exist, and even if Google itself didn't archive those posts, anonymous
>posts would still go to thousands of other usenet servers around the
>world (including other servers with large archives) and as soon as
>someone posted a reply, THAT post would go to Google and be archived
>there. So getting Google to stop posting them to their archive would
>not really change the fact that the item was posted and widely
>distributed, to be easily seen by anyone with internet access.
First, I agree with everything you've said. But I think the point you
may have missed is that the 'slanderous' poster is using Google to
generate the posts. Ryadia (hopefully) isn't targeting Google just
because they happen to archive the posts.
Usenet has a problem with Google. They allow any idiot to set up a
Google account and then start posting to usenet. This needs to stop.
If it takes a few lawsuits, then so be it.
--
Owamanga!