Cult threats legal action against forum

[Keoni]

Hello everyone,

I'm wondering if anyone could kindly advise me on how to properly handle the following situation.

I run an online forum devoted to discussing issues regarding spirituality and similar things, which at times can be rather controversial.

One of our forum members posted his devastating experience with a certain cult (in Australia) where he experienced first hand dramatic things and this is his contribution to warning people of the cult's practices.

Last year I (forum admin) was first contacted by some cult representative threatening to sue the forum if the post was not taken down. I have invoked the freedom of speech and also the human rights acts to decline such preposterous request.

This year, a couple of days ago, another cult representative is threatening again with legal action if we don't reveal tracking information (IP and other information) specific to the member who posted it. They claim that the post is highly defamatory of a number of people and their organization.

My forum is really a worldwide resource. I'm located in Europe and my fellow administrators / moderators are located a bit all over the globe, both in US, Europe and Asia. Servers are located in the US (thus subject to US law). Our members are obviously from all over the world.

I'm wondering if anyone has gone through anything of the sort and how to tackle this problem.

I already posted this situation in legal related sites but without much of a result, so I thought that maybe someone can shed some light into this issue from an admin point of view.

Actually I have a suggestion for you Patrick, if possible and if it makes sense, of course, include a short legal section in your future editions of "Managing Online Forums" with some of the most common things an admin will probably find. I loved your book btw Very well written, informative and organized!!! Based on real experience which is invaluable to any forum admin.

Any help what-so-ever is immensely welcome.

Thanks in advance,

Keoni

[Patrick]

Hello and welcome Keoni. Glad to have you.

I appreciate that you picked up the book and thanks for the kind words as well as the feedback. There are some relevant legal issues covered in the book where they fit, such as copyright infringement, criminal accusations, etc., but I will definitely keep that in mind.

I am wondering about the content of this thread. I don't really want to see it (nor should you show it ), but what I am wondering is, does the person make any criminal accusations? i.e. so and so stole, so and so attempted to stab me, etc.? The reason I ask is that, personally, I believe that criminal accusations should be left for appropriate venues, i.e. the authorities. Allowing people to make accusations of a criminal nature on your forums is somewhat dicey, at best.

I try not to let people sign up and use my community as a soapbox to tear down someone else. So, if someone joins and their first post is "so and so wronged me," that's not really going to happen.

Legal disclaimers aside (see a qualified attorney, I am not one, this is not legal advice, etc.), personally, I might not converse with the person over e-mail. If I really thought they were a crazy, insane group of people that was just trying to silence legitimate speech, I'd stop talking to them and I might even publicize their tactics. I'd let them send me an actual, printed letter.

And then, if the threat was genuine and I had money or a friend, I'd talk to an attorney. You might want to do that anyway. If the threats are completely invalid, I might get in touch with an attorney, as well, to see what legal grounds I might have in giving them a little something back on the grounds of harassment.

Keep in mind that freedom of speech isn't a defense if something is truly defamatory. Freedom of speech also isn't allow on your forums if you have any sort of guidelines at all. You are choosing to allow this post. Not saying that's a bad thing, just that freedom of speech isn't something that can be invoked randomly.

As far as IPs, etc., you shouldn't share that information with them unless a court orders you to do so.

One other thing to consider would be the EFF. Though I'm not a fan of all of their work, they do help people whose speech has been threatened: http://www.eff.org/about/contact If this is a well known group that is threatening you, they may be interested in the case. Maybe drop them a note and show them the letters.

So, this is a starting point. I hope that it helps.

Thanks,

Patrick
_________________
Patrick O'Keefe - CommunityAdmins.com Administrator
Author, Managing Online Forums - A Practical Guide to Online Community Management
Have a suggestion or a bit of feedback relating to CommunityAdmins.com? Please contact me!
User Guidelines

[Bob Hubbard]

Patrick's covered the bulk of t I think. I'll add my experiences to the mix.

I've received a number of "give us the info or else" and "take that down or else" threats. My standard reply completelly depends on how they approach me.

If it's a polite request, I consider it and we decide on a case by case basis.

If it's rude, threatening, or an ultimatum, my standard reply is that their authorized attorney can contact mine. If they email me, I send the bit s below or something comparable.

[Keoni]

Hi Patrick and Bob,

Thank you so much for your wonderful replies.
I couldn't ask for more and I'm happy to have received your feedback.

In the requests we received there are no criminal charges. The first time they asked the post to be taken down or else... and this second time they're asking for information that can lead to the identification of the author or else... They repeatedly mention the post is highly defamatory of a number of people and their organization... but in fact I find this is a worthy real life experience of a member and I feel that suppressing the post would be an act against all others who can learn from it so taking it down or revealing any information is obviously completely out of question. Actually this is the purpose of having a forum so that people can debate and express their views independently.

It's a curious thing how coincidentally this forum suddenly started being "bombed" by hundreds of spam attempts, both advertising posts and new account registrations. Maybe a coincidence? I'm happy I noticed and acted upon it immediately and their effect in the forum is null. I have the forum staff on red alert also for other possible threats so we've implemented a couple of other policies.

Are you aware of any automated (or non-automated) tools / scripts to have in place to detect / prevent hacking attempts? The forum is fairly secure (and up to date) and I've escalated security a bit further but I'd like to be fully prepared for whatever is coming our way. DB is of course our main concern.

Regarding the response to give, I'm still considering it.
I'm not sure they are ready to start an international juridical fight over a single post, but we never know. Better be ready of course. Jurisdiction in this case is unclear except for the servers part. I'm a lot more inclined to believe they'll use scare tactics and other non-clean methods to try to achieve their purposes if we don't reply within what they expect.

This brings me to another point or requisite to take into account regarding the selection of a hosting provider: legal coverage and protection and (all inclusive) legal counseling. It's not only all about bandwidth, features and security. This is specially true for controversial forums and web sites!!!

Something else I'm also happy to notice, is that we have apparently similar ways of managing our forums. To handle our users and material they posted with the highest degree of respect and commitment towards their protection and well being all within the highest ethical standards. I think it's the only way to go when we truly care.

Thanks!!

K.

[Bob Hubbard]

My experiences with these matters in the past is that if you insist they obtain a court order in your jurisdiction (it's your site, so I would tend to believe your local courts are the ones who have the ball, though European law may be different than US in this) they move on to other things, such as bot attacks, and signing up to post debunks on the matter, if they do anything at all.

There are some scripts for both vB and Phpbb that I'm aware of that attempt to tighten things up a bit, but in my experience nothing beats having a good staff who can sense the nonsense and stop it.

My first question here would be, do you have a Terms and Conditions statement, and if so, does it establish a jurisdiction?

Here's 2 boiler plates I use on my sites.

[Patrick]

Great stuff, Mr. Hubbard.

My pleasure, Keoni.

Re: criminal charges. What I was asking was if the person who posted about this cult made any, not if the cult made any in their requests.

Thanks,

Patrick
_________________
Patrick O'Keefe - CommunityAdmins.com Administrator
Author, Managing Online Forums - A Practical Guide to Online Community Management
Have a suggestion or a bit of feedback relating to CommunityAdmins.com? Please contact me!
User Guidelines

[Keoni]

Wow Bob! Thanks for reply!

You're absolutely right, better not insist
I have a terms and conditions statement but it isn't as thorough as yours and it doesn't mention specifically the court jurisdiction.
I fear that if I mention it explicitly I'm actually allowing these kind of organizations to know which direction they can turn for this. As it now is, by specifically not mentioning this information, I'm leaving it in the open giving them a bit of extra work.

On the other side if I let them know my country jurisdiction means I'm available to resolve such disputes in a lawful manner. Tough call to make, I guess some juridical advice is the way to go.

Patrick thanks for the clarification. No criminal claims have been made, but there are a number of offenses implicit. Individually a person often doesn't have the resources to pursue legal action against such organizations. It's a pity because they always get away with their offenses and the very last thing a person can do is expose their experience somewhere in a forum, blog or web site, so it's easy to harass admins of web sites who have them in order to get rid of details of their practices. The organization I mean has got a huge amount of other sites with testimonies of their "worth".

Take care,

K.

[Patrick]

Hey Keoni,

Thanks for the reply.

While that's certainly, absolutely true in some cases... there is also something to be said for due process. If someone doesn't actually have a case at all and just wants to hurt someone or some company, it is very easy to post to a forum and invent all sorts of claims to harm them, when they know they couldn't actually do anything legally because what they say isn't true or isn't provable. If the forum allows it, then those people get away with something, as well.

It is important to treat everyone similarly, from the most unassuming private citizen to the biggest corporation in the world. You have to be careful not to hold them to separate standards and let the citizen get away with murder.

You have to be careful that you don't allow people like this to turn your community into something you don't want, creating something that is not respected, but feared or loathed, and potentially putting yourself at a liability, as well.

I'm not saying any of this applies to this particular case, though. Just food for thought, for anyone.

Thanks again,

Patrick
_________________
Patrick O'Keefe - CommunityAdmins.com Administrator
Author, Managing Online Forums - A Practical Guide to Online Community Management
Have a suggestion or a bit of feedback relating to CommunityAdmins.com? Please contact me!
User Guidelines

[Bob Hubbard]

Part of the reason for setting the jurisdiction is so that you can control the battle. Better to make them come to you, rather than you be forced to goto them. There is one group in question that has been hammed on dozens of martial arts sites, who gets cases decided in a small town court by a default judgment (meaning the other side didn't show up and lost as a result). By you setting it, IF things really go bad, your lawyer can work to move the case to home court for you.
_________________
Webmaster:
MartialTalk.com - Friendly Discussion about the Martial Arts
KenpoTalk.com - The Internet's #1 Kenpo Community
Dead Parrot Tavern - Pirates/Ren Faires /Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Anime/Gaming/Technical and more!

[kruzzen]

I really wouldn't be worried unless its an unsupported accusation. If the "organization" was a serious organization, they would just leave it alone IMO unless you are creating lies about them.

I myself am a Freemason and I read so much jibberish about us but we Masons pretty much ignore ignorance, its the best way to do it.
_________________
~Shawn
Membership Referral Contest | AdminQuest Forum Admin Community