Hi all,
FL have been in touch numerous times this year and we have been asking them to initiate section 5 of the defamation act which deals with potentially defamatory information that has been posted on websites.
What we have found when going through that process is that many users would rather have their posts removed than risk having their personal information handed over for FL to then take personal legal action against them.
A section 5 process looks like this:
We receive a complaint.
We ask for a formal complaint that has to include a number of things including why they feel that post is defamatory.
We mail the poster and ask if they'd like the post to stand and they give us their info or if they'd like it removed. We also ask if they are happy or not for us to hand their info over to the complainant.
We then either keep the post or remove it.
If we have a poster's info and they wish to stand by their post but not hand over their details to the complainant, the complainant can then go to court and ask for a court order that would mean we have to hand the personal info over and a poster can then be taken to court as an individual.
If the poster refuses to give us their info, then we would have to take the post down under the Defamation act.
Apologies if that's confusing, there's more on this here: www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/269138/defamation-guidance.pdf
We are more than happy to reinstate the removed posts but users have to know that they can be held personally responsible for the words that they write and there is a chance that they can be taken to court.
We are all for freedom of speech, that is why we allow the threads to run as we do but we do need to hammer home that folks are personally responsible for their words.
Apologies for running ahead on this one and removing posts, we do try our best to get it right. Thanks for starting the thread.
Please do report your removed post if you would like it reinstated.