They’ll be back soon so don’t worry. Just been chatting to Dave. servers for Politics.ie being set up in the States now.
In case you missed the action, Bertie’s lawyers got on to Dave Cochrane about his site Politics.ie when a poster on the forum said stuff they didn’t like. Now they are hurt and annoyed and all the rest that what was posted was there for 20 hours so not only want the name of the person who made it but a few more people who also responded to the post. Right. They also want an apology. Court order please for the IPs. Apology? Dave says no and is seemingly going to fight them. You’d think the Taoiseach’s lawyers would have enough to be doing what with the 440,000+ other things surrounding Bertie.
Anyway, Dave assures me they’ll be back and annoying legal teams once again but from a new location. This really smacks of a ham fisted way of shutting down the public from talking about Bertie and all the Mahon Tribunal stuff. John has his take on attacks on free speech here.
For Bertie:
America you say, land of “Freedom of Speech” etc etc.
And there was I thinking Russia would be such a better bet.
Can’t think why politics.ie and Russia seemed such a good fit 🙂
John
[…] Damien Mulley has a post about it too. Digg this article […]
Had a quick look at this, so my opinion may be uninformed but what the heck 🙂 I’m not really sure this is a freedom of speech issue as the initial complaint the firm of solicitors made was about comments on their firm. I’m inclined to think that they were taking reasonable steps to protect their reputation. The names and addresses of posters was way over the top – who knows what they were thinking with that. They’ve just compounded the bad publicity by coming the heavy on the whole thing. Incidents like this tend to make me think that people should take more time to consider whether their post or email is contributing to the discussion before committing delivery of their words.
I had a look too. While I have to say modus operandi on all sides leaves me a bit cold I am very bemused by the site. I used to read it once upon a time, for about five minutes, decided it wasn’t for me and now I think it appears to be peopled by many posters who feel they are somehow important and influential. Is it really that important and influential or are there delusions of grandeur?
Any time I’ve seen it I just thought it was like watching a bunch of 12 year olds pretending they knew something about the real world. Maybe I’m really too cynical at this stage.
As one of the people that Ahern’s lawyers are after, I have felt the need to put my response to this on the record:
http://skinflicks.blogspot.com/2008/03/aherns-solicitors-try-to-silence-online.html
Moving the server to the US won’t do much good, unless Mr. Cochrane moves there too
@Fergal
Depends on who the admin is now. If mrnobody@anonymous.com is the new site admin then it’s gets interesting from a legal perspective.
John
I don’t know what the corporate set-up of P.ie is (I presume David Cochrane has set up a limited company of sort), but whoever owns it is a publisher and as such liable, irrespective of who’s the admin, or where the host is.
It’s been coming for a while. Politics.ie is full of hardline political hacks from various parties who attack rival political figures in the online version of no holds barred bare knuckle fights.
They obviously don’t know who it is they’re dealing with. In the end, this will do nothing but bring publicity to politics.ie
What a waste of everyones time.
Why don’t they ban spam. It would mean more than banning comment. There must be a better way to protect one’s reputation.
Some questions from blather.net: http://www.blather.net/zeitgeist/archives/2008/03/taoiseach_bertie_aherns_solici.html
Have you heard the conspiracy theory on this yet?
It’s a doozie.
[edit: and I’m not linking to it. ]
[…] light of the goings on at Politics.ie (Mulley has some detail if you’re not sure of what’s happening) I’ll be on Today FM’s The Last Word […]
Beautiful. Thankyou…
[…] JC Skinner has a good summary of the whole thing and Mulley has written about it here. […]
My in-house lawyer advises me that, since solicitors aren’t permitted to incorporate, there can be no such legal entity as “Frank Ward & Co”.
Potentially the folk in the letter/email are directing the site owners to commit a crime. To hand over the info requested is contrary to the Data Protection Act.
Could this be conspiracy to commit a crime? Or incitement maybe?