">My Big World Of Crap

This is a bit of a worry.   Software firm 2Clix is suing the owner of the Whirlpool internet forum over comments posted on the forum which were highly derogatory about the company’s product.  2Clix is asking for $150,000 in damages and an injunction requiring Whirlpool to remove forum threads highly critical of 2Clix’s accounting software.

In a statement of claim filed with the Supreme Court of Queensland, 2Clix said the comments, published in two threads between between late last year and July this year, led it to sustain “a severe downturn in monthly sales”. 2Clix claimed the statements were both false and malicious, and said it contacted Whirlpool about the matter this year but Whirlpool refused to take the forum threads down.

Amanda Stickley, a senior law lecturer at the Queensland University of Technology, said if 2Clix won there would be severe consequences for website operators as they would have to be “very vigilant in checking material on the website and remove anything that could cause injury to someone’s business reputation”.  She also said it would be very difficult for 2Clix to successfully sue the owner of the forum (Simon Wright) for injurious falsehood over comments made by Whirlpool users. It would have to prove the statements were false, that they were made in malice, that 2Clix actually suffered damage in the form of monetary loss and, critically, that Wright had intended to cause 2Clix monetary loss by allowing the material to remain on the website.

“I don’t think you could actually prove that for a web operator, that they personally intended the damage because of their malicious intention, especially when it’s posted by a third party that they’ve got no relationship to,” Stickley said.

I believe she’s probably right and that the case is unlikely to succeed (admittedly based on my very limited knowledge of the law).  However its a concern that legal action is used to gag free speech and (presumably) legitimate comment on a product or service.  No doubt the company is hoping that Wright will be threatened by its deeper pockets and presumably greater capacity to fund legal action, and pull his head in and take the comments off the forum.

I have to wonder why companies, or individuals, take this sort of legal action.  I’d have thought that leaving it on the forum probably exposes it to a few dozen, or hundred, potential customers.  The publicity associated with the legal action gets it all out into the wider public domain, and sees all the dirty linen aired for all to see.  I have a professional interest in the type of software that 2Clix makes, so found all the comments in the Whirlpool forums extremely interesting - never would have heard it without it attracting my attention via the news reports of the court action.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 12th, 2007 at 8:03 am and is filed under geekery, in the news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.