Wow, big story unfolding as we speak, though it might be relevent to mention here:

 

 

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22405674-2,00.html

 

http://whirlpool.net.au/

 

Kind of scary that they (2clix) are suing a forum for comments made my posters. It seems to be backfiring, but still, thats a pretty mean thing to do.

 

WP has (and still is) been a great site for finding good internet deals and hardware questions.

Yup, its not as uncommon as you might think.

Thats why I, and the rest of the admin team, may seem like nazis with respect to what kind of talk and content we allow here from time to time.

 

I know a person who has spent the last 3 years in and out of court fighting to defend himself over comments made on his (car related) forum. He did not make the comments, but provided the forum where the comments were made so he has had to fork out thousands defending himself. They most probably will not win what they are asking for, but he has lost so much just defending himself.

LOL Jim did he claim Ford could beat Holden?

 

If you read the WP posts, the posters are business users who are pretty damning about 2clix's software product, to the point of suggesting a class action against them for misrepresenting their product. Its big corporate biccies, no wonder there's a fuss and 2clix want it removed ASAP.

Same thing happened three years ago with Rugby League forums, both official club and fansite ones.

 

The law is worryingly ambiguous on electronic defamation by publication....

The law is worryingly ambiguous on electronic defamation by publication....

 

Oh Ohhhh, Big words ^^^^^^

 

*runs away*

OCAU from memory also has had an attempt at being sued by a company. Turns out that Agg won/settled without paying a shiny dime I believe. Though they do have some pretty strict policies about naming businesses without merit. They even do have a legal notice somewhere which is quite a useful thing to have I reckon.

 

I remember when someone who didn't like the fact that I had snapped a shot of them at a party relieving their stomach of their contents failed with an attempt to get me for deformation of character.

 

HAHA sucks to them!

Whirlpool seems to be a bit of a breeding place for whinging IMHO. This certainly does not apply to all of its participants, however, though most of its post are whining about something or other. I work for a major ISP and have been defamed, by association, numerous times by its members. So I say good luck to the complainants.

Yep Wingepool it is. For all the whining, I think it is a very worthy site. If you pick through the content and avoid the 'Cant connect 2 net so ISP 'X' suxxorzzzzz' type posts there's a lot of good info there on hardware, troubleshooting, VOIP etc plus on issues other people have had with your (existing or potential future) ISP. There's no better place for comparing ADSL/ADSL2+ plans and ISPs IMO.

 

ISPs must hate the site, esp. Telstra/Bigpond...

Edited September 13, 200717 yr by McCloud

i like to call it whirlpee... because thats what the participants to do eachother.

LOL the threads under scrutiuny now have 15,000+ views, that's quite a few more ppl than if the threads had been left alone!

Yeah - I can just see the genius at the plaintiff's offices:

 

"Gee, 25 people on a relatively obscure sub-forum owned by a broke computer geek are mouthing off about our product...I know! Let's sue the broke guy and in the meantime tell 95% of our potential customer base about how bad our customers think our product is! Oh look, we are on the front page of every major newspaper in the country, yay!"

 

Methinks said genius has pointy hair and employs a guy named Dilbert....

Fools. Whenever some company/corporation tries to sue a web based forum or site they always create bad publicity for themselves. It can be surprising how a popular site can rally people together and really hurt a corporation for being asses.

My favourite example is at The Best Page in the Universe (Mad Maddox's site) where he got screwed over by an airline so voices his complaint on his site. The fans hit the airline soooo hard with complains and abuse they had to beg Maddox to edit/retract his statement.

the difficult thing with the Whirlpool situation is that probably all that posted in the "offending threads" were network related or IT professionals. That piece of software isn't an off the shelf solution that you find in Officeworks, and is pretty specialty based.

So any criticism of people who have actually used it would be very damning. I would not be surprised if Simon Wright gets a lot of sworn affidavit's from the originators stating their employment at the time, and qualifications, as well as a satement of why they made those specific comments. overall I think 2Clixs will be over a barrel with spread cheeks if they (Whirlpool) acts smartly and plays the educated comment defence.

 

Hmm I found it rather amusing today that News.com.au aka IHateRudd.com.au seems to think that Australia has freedom of speech. For a company which is meant to be dealing in factual if not googled information, they would actually see it lacking in out constitution, as well as some important UN human rights stuff which we should be signing too.