… set up a website containing very specific defamatory material against a very specific person and damage their professional reputation
If your bad review of any company, is based on FACTS, either here (Germany) or in the US, nobody can do anything against the website. US courts have confimed that not only once bit many times.
Obviously I am not a lawyer either, but there is of course a major difference between criticizing a company and criticizing an individual. Even so, if what you claim is true and in the public interest it would be unlikely for an individual to win such a court case.
No real difference. One can sue for economic / reputational damage anywhere.
If your bad review of any company, is based on FACTS, either here (Germany) or in the US, nobody can do anything against the website. US courts have confimed that not only once bit many times.
No Alexis you still don’t “get it”. Who establishes the “facts”? In the civilised world it is a court. And who pays for that? It would have to come out of your €100k.
Highly relevant I would have thought is that even if an action fails, the cost of defending such an action could be ruinous.
That is not correct. Have you ever read Hotel Reviews on Trip Advisor? There’s thousands of websites that write reviews and if those reviews are based on personal experience and facts, nobody can do anything against them. Just Google it yourself.
No Alexis you still don’t “get it”.
Ah, looks like I have a very bad day, I really don’t get anything you write …
The point that I get from Peter’s original post is two fold:
1. He simply doesn’t want the hassle of having to deal with parties who are threatening to sue.
It doesn’t matter at all that it might be obvious to a lawyer that such claims will ultimately fail; he simply doesn’t want the hassle nor expense of dealing with them. That I perfectly understand. EuroGA isn’t a big commerical enterprise. It’s a voluntary service run not for profit, so he doesn’t need the grief or expense!
2. It’s wrong to allow positive postings about a company, if that company will insist that negative comments must be removed.
In such a case, a reader of the forum will only see positive comments and might unfairly form an incorrect impression of the company, rather than a balanced impression.
This makes sense to me and seems to be the best for the reader of the forums.
He simply doesn’t want the hassle of having to deal with parties who are threatening to sue.
I can easily accept that!
I think that many of these problems would disappear if users were forced to register with their real name and if every post showed it too.
Stuff on trip advisor etc gets away with it because most of the authors
Peter_Mundy has got it right, above. It’s ok if you aren’t worth anything. Then you can slag off who you want.
This thread started on a slightly different matter which is not advertising companies who have threatened to sue.
Dublinpilot has got it 100% right.
I think that many of these problems would disappear if users were forced to register with their real name and if every post showed it too.
You still don’t “get it”, Alexis.
My name is Engelbert Humperdinck. Or, a name of someone where you live, Wolfgang Schäuble. Or Peter Strauss. Sites which insist on names (like COPA where you posted my name and where I live, out of some bizzare revenge, and their mods bizzarely refused to remove it) simply have loads of “real” names. We did this to death here already in some other thread. It is trivial to do even if they use credit card details.
I agree with dublinpilot. While it would be great to have a place to really openly discuss bad experiences with companies it is hard to see how this could be done hassle free.
As long as that is the case, anyone threatening legal action against EuroGA or its members should obviously not get any good publicity here at all.
Every user name on COPA is the real name. You have to prove it too, and fake names were never accepted on COPA. Even very well know celebrities use their real names on COPA.
Why can’t you accept that?
Edit: Only in the public (non-member) part of COPA “usernames” are allowed.
They most be doing an FBI background check on every applicant. I am truly impressed!
