 Sometimes the war on Wu takes some casualties and so today Mr.. Dave Gamble who comes to us from the UK is an information consultant by trade and a blogger behind the skeptical science comm blog Today Dave will tell us a cautionary tale about blogging criticism and libel law So, please welcome Dave this talk how to avoid getting sued for libel No, yes success Okay, right I got sued for three million dollars now you might argue they're not real dollars because they were Canadian dollars Okay, I've got four points to bring to you today. It's a it's a cautionary tale now. I just had a curiosity who hear blogs Okay, who drops comments and blogs Yeah, because you're at risk as well. I didn't appreciate this So the tale goes back to that April of last year when I wrote a posting on Sai Baba that well-known charlatan fraud and oh, sorry. I'm not being politically correct and asshole Okay, so I'm not quite from the Penn and Teller School of Litigation fraud I Basically went through the details of who he was what he had done. What his claims were? Here's the evidence that he's clearly a fraud and that generated the usual kind of responses in the comments. I had various folks who went and explained why he was who they claimed he was and others who Piled in after and said no, no, no, no, no. It's it's all quite quite correct Now what actually happened was that I've got one specific comment from somebody goes Ah, well if you're blogging about false gurus, there's a Canadian bloke who does all the same magic tricks And he's living a rather lavish lifestyle and went through all the details it was an anonymous comment from somebody I no idea who they were and That was interlaced here about comment 14 or 15. I think in response to that. I Get a rather bizarre E-mail it was an email a complaint Apparently this particular comment was slanderous Which was a rather odd thing to say because slander is a legal term that applies to spoken communication Whereas this comic was written down The other thing that was rather odd about the email was that Apparently the commenter had linked to a website that did not belong to him and it went on in this kind of tone there were there was all sorts of bizarre stuff and Towards the end. Well, I'm so horribly upset about this that if you don't do something about it. Well, I'm going to sue you And oh by the way best regards Who the heck sends a threatening letter inside it best regards So I couldn't resist that one Now I think this is where I first made a catastrophic mistake because this was in fact a letter complaint Or should I say email? Okay So, yeah, they were cretinist lunatics But it was still a letter complaint Now there's a couple of things here. It was an anonymous email. They were very vague and waffly I should have actually formally sent them a letter saying, okay, right. I need to know who you are I need to understand what your complaint is. I Need to Instead I didn't do that. I went through their email line by line decimating it What would you have done? Well, the reaction was I Saw a few more comments that appeared on the blog and I assumed up either they're they're gonna blow off steam that way And that I thought that was the end of it Unfortunately, the email I actually had sent to them in response was sufficiently provocative to motivate them to go, right? and so I got a letter of complaint Formally from a lawyer Based in Canada Now I live in the UK. So you kind of think okay, right this guy's written a letter He's arranged for it to be delivered to my home address Well, yeah, okay, so I don't keep it. I don't keep the secret as to who I am or where I am. That doesn't matter Is the mic gone off? No back on Okay, and so inside the letter. He basically said yadda yadda yadda you posted this please take it down Or else and I thought to myself come on. It's not the posting you're complaining about it. It's just one comment Now I chose to ignore it Think to yourself now. I live in the UK. This is a guy who's in Canada What can he possibly do? You know, even if he takes me to court in Canada. I'm a foreign citizen. I have no assets in Canada. I don't care anything about Canada No, my is the mic cutting in and out. Is that okay, right? Okay So I thought to myself well who'd be stupid enough to actually go to court and sue me over one comment No, nobody could be that stupid. I mean really come on. Well, they decided to prove that thought wrong Okay, this was my second big mistake if you get a legal letter don't ignore it Take some action on it Now the first point here is okay take it down whatever they're complaining about. It's not permanent If you take it down, what's to stop you then having a nice friendly or formal dialogue establishing the facts Working out what exactly is going on and if there's no credibility to what they're saying you can post it back up again Or not the case may be okay, so What happened next They decided to actually sue me. They issued a statement of claim from a court in Toronto. Oh, right, okay I'm blocking the antenna. That's the way I'm holding the mic. I'm so sorry. I haven't been on the microphone holding course yet Okay, so Where was I? Oh, yes. Okay, so they issued a statement of claim now this is a legal document that basically says issued by the court in Toronto Well, it was basically saying you issued this comment where we're suing you for damages for the tune of three million dollars And That's when I decided it's probably a good idea to take this comment down Okay, so The problem here the third problem my face was the fact that sometimes when you're good at certain things I I'm an IT guy. I'm a good at IT kind of things It can sometimes create the false sense of confidence that oh, I can fix this myself. It's easy I mean, how hard can it be? They've issued a statement of claim. I can do a little bit of reference from my good friend. Dr. Google Who's very reliable and I Can issue my own statement of defense what could possibly go wrong? Well, don't do it seriously really really don't do it What actually happened was that I was perceived to be a very very small fish and they proceeded to eat me for lunch Because this wasn't the plaintiffs who are dealing with this they had hired professionals Okay, so here's what I should have done I should have tapped into my skeptical network and This is how in fact I finally resolved things. There are many many good people out there In fact, there are many many good people here Who are more than willing to help and more than able to help and so what I eventually did was that I posted a comment on the J ref forum, which Well a quick summary of it is basically And a few very good folks came along and said well this and that and the other and Several of them said ah you need to talk to and pointed out One of the forum leads who was a lawyer in Canada. In fact in the very same city Colleen rubber choice. By the way, Colleen. Are you in the room? Nope. Okay. Well, she was a tremendous help And she gave me some very good advice She took the time to go through all the paperwork and said right. Okay, so you need to do this you need to do that and Finally, I was on the right track now I also had conversations with several of the folks such as Simon Singh who was very very helpful as well and he gave me some good guidance and Point to be in the right direction And he pointed me towards an English rival lawyer who said look he says quite often when these things happen It's just a shot across the boughs. They don't really mean it. They're just trying to I'm doing it again. Aren't I I'm holding the microphone the wrong way okay, so His observation was from his experience is that people quite often Will back off from a position of strength And this was confirmed. This is actually what happened because Colleen said right Okay, send a formal little note to the plaintiff's lawyers saying that You are going to engage legal counsel and That's exactly what I did and the very next response almost a media response. I had back from them was ah, right? Okay, right and tell you what take a comment down and we'll go away To which I thought yeah, you know, that's not a bad idea well There are certain there are certain times when it's a good idea to actually take a stand and there are other times When it's a good idea to you know This is not a battle that's worth fighting because this was an anonymous comment that they were complaining about From somebody who I had no idea who they were and yes, some of the comment was quite factually correct and Some of it actually was liable this And so I had no appetite to really defend it So I agreed to remove the comment and they agreed not to bother me again. So who really won? well How much did it cost me? How much did it cost them? Well, it cost me a heck of a lot of stress It's true because in fact I had discovered that I did face being wiped out completely financially Yes, if I done nothing a default judgment in Canada can actually be enforced in the UK Because the UK and Canada have reciprocal arrangements. No on the other hand if I happen to live in Norway I could have simply gone and they couldn't have done anything But because I happen to geographically live in the UK. Well, but what did it actually cost them? cost them over 50,000 Canadian dollars and fees Just to remove one comment Yes, they were cretinist lunatics and here's the evidence Why would somebody do that? Well Come to that in a minute Well their claim was in fact, no, no, you made a horrible mistake. We're just a charity We're not a religious group at all. Well, we're not pretending to be Sai Baba. We're not doing magic tricks No, no, no horrible mistake. That's why we're suing you And so no doubt they'd use their charitable funds All $50,000 to have this one comment removed. Well, okay, so Let's meet the head of the charity Now remember that this is a respectable charity and Horrible mistake had been made and there's no religious connotations here whatsoever and here he is Oh, he stressed to Sai Baba. Oh, he even has a photograph of Sai Baba in the background Yes, they were a small minority religious group. So what would motivate these people to be so concerned about one comment? Well, what I've since discovered Was that this gentleman, and I use the term very loosely was in fact currently on trial as the Fixer in a bid rigging scam and so what they were actually doing was going through the internet and attempting to remove Anything negative said that said about this guy so that when they presented their case in court for the bid rigging scam He would look nice and squeaky clean. So that's really what was motivating these folks But in the end, I mean what actually happened to me was pointless It was frivolous, and I suspect it could have been avoided So I've got four things to suggest if you block To avoid being liable to avoid a libel lawsuit The first thing is look if people start complaining people I'd be courteous courteous to treat them as Folks and try and establish what they're trying to complain about Don't ignore legal requests. It really is not a good idea Take it down then have a dialogue and if there's no Reason whatsoever post it back up It's not permanent and really don't do what I do. Don't try to fix it yourself. Take some proper guidance now It was one comment, but their legal paperwork ran to 52 pages and Tap into your network here. You've got some good folks here who are more than willing to help I mean, for example, I Sent a couple of emails to DJ and he was ever so suspicious But I really appreciated that because in dark moments like that when you realize that you've potentially faced being completely Wiped out financially. It means a lot to have people behind you who come in and say look, we're with you You're not alone Okay So you use the podium Mike. Do we have any questions for David? Why didn't you counter Sue clouding your name? Why didn't I counter Sue? It's a good question. I Really had no I've never heard of these people before. I had no idea who they were and To be honest, I think I was content to let the legal process of this guy going on trial as a Fixer in a bid rigging scam to take its own Due course. I think if I had actually counter sued it wouldn't have been very productive and at the end of the day I had started off with my own statement of defense and That's the point where I could have actually come back with a counter claim if I'd had proper legal advice But because I was doing it myself. I was just going into defensive mode. Thank you So first off your derogatory comments about Canadians are completely offensive and you'll be hearing from my lawyer Secondly I'm curious Had they actually baited you to take you to libel court in the UK This could have been a very different situation Because of the kind of antiquated libel laws in the UK and I know that a lot of people have been being taken to court for that Have you do you have any advice? to try and Get around that issue Well, interestingly enough what I did discover was that the libel laws in Canada are based on the English libel laws and are just as Plain to friendly So I don't think I've been so badly off if it had been English libel laws because I did actually through Simon Singh have a Contact with a good English libel lawyer, but his Thinking was well, look, I know nothing about Canadian law. You're gonna have to go and find somebody else Okay