bill cobbett wrote:Feisty wrote:Basically to engage your brain before you use your typing fingers in this case.
If people's lives and reputations are likely to be affected by what you say, don't say it unless you can back it up with fact.
If you must be offensive make sure that what you are saying is both truthful and relevant. eg. Britannia called me an ignorant chav cow, or to be more precise, asked if she was able to call me one. Personally I think that particular comment made her look a bit stupid and immature and there was certainly no point in saying it. However, if others on the forum took up her comment and started to treat me as such then she would have been guilty of commiting libel. If the forum owner then refused to delete the post then they would have been committing libel to.
What I'd say to the people who want to be able to say what they like and to hell with the consequences is have the courage of your convictions and set up your own forum to do it on instead of moaning about posts being removed and members, who a lot of people believe to be both boring and offensive, being suspended . It's not hard.
Thanks for that Feisty but I need a little clarification. Re: These more personal and potentially libelous remarks you refer to above. Can you give us your opinion, given the legal experience you refer to above, if I was to write the following. Let me stress that none of the below are true.
Which of these is legally libelous:-
Feisty is an ignorant chav cow.
It's alleged that Feisty is an ignorant chav cow.
I have read that Feisty is .....
I have heard that Feisy is .....
I saw on CY Forum that Feisty was called an ....
Someone was telling me the other day that ...
My view is that only the first one is, as F posts above, would you agree ?
(Let me stress again that none of the above are true and would hope that Feisty takes them in good humour so as to advance our little debate.)
What is legally libel can only be decided by a court of law.
My opinion would be that any of the statements could be potentially libellous because you would be spreading an untrue statement so although you were not the first person to have stated it you would be exacerbating it.