Someone wants to sue me
 

Hi all, I was wondering if someone here might be able to give me some advise? First of all, I'm in the UK, so I should imagine that UK law applies.

I run a forum (http://arathor.theice.co.uk/) it's for the community the players on the Arathor server in the game World of WarCraft. It's a fairly popular community (my extra bandwidth bills are testament to this), and enjoyed by most.

The problem is, I've had this one guy sign up, specifically with an anon account, so he could slag off his fellow guild mates on the site (don't ask). The guild leader sent me an email asking to see if I could track down who this person was (to see if the IP address I had logged for this member matched anyone elses IP address), which I did, but it didn't match anyone.

I sent a message back saying so, and explaining that I'd not be able to give the email address of the user or anything like that (I didn't give the IP address out myself). He didn't get back to me.

I've now had a message from the anon member claiming that a super mod on the site has given out his IP address, and it's been used to track him down via another site that he is a member of (and has thus been kicked out of the guild, or something like that).

Because of this, he's now saying that he's going to take 'legal advise' against the site because his IP address was given out, claiming that it's against the law


HELP!!!


Does anyone know if there are any laws in the UK that state it's illegal to give out IP addresses, and if so, does he have the right to go after me (as the forum owner) or after the person gave out the IP address (who is a volinteer on the site).

(what worries me even more is that he's claiming to 'rubbish' the name of the site by going around saying we're a security risk)

Can anyone help me please?

Don't ask on a forum of PHP coders nor even a forum of lawyers. Go seek a lawyer instead.

Having said that, anybody with half a sense of how the Internet works could get your IP address in 5 seconds. It's hardly a mark of anonyminity.

He would first have to proof that:
- This moderator really did publicize the IP address.
- This Moderator did this in accordence to your Moderator rules.
- He has damage because of this.

Just my thoughts.

First none or at least most of us here cannot comment from a legal standpoint.

But the personal opinion is, don't panic. I have my forums set to diplay ip's on all posts to everyone, in hopes it may cut down on the few idiots that occassional try to post spam. It seems to help but nothing cuts out everything.

It could be nothing more than a idol threat, and although scary, I would think it is most likely that and nothing will become of it. A lot of providers use dynamic ip addressing, and ip's are shared and not fixed to one user. He /she would have hire a lawyer, get the provider involved, and cost him or her a lot of money without ever knowing if they could when it. And against an individual that runs a not for profit site, and not even knowing what assets you may have. (no point in wining a case against someone who owns nothing). And all this just because they got kicked off some site. I think the person is pissed off and wants to share the pain. I personally would not even reply back.

I have traced ip's before and I can tell the location area but not the person. (you would likely need the co-operation of a provider to nail who had the ip at any given time) Your super mod's likely should not be giving out ip's to other sites, and the person with ip that was on your site may not be the person assigned the same ip on another site.

Hi guys, thank you for the info. I've spoken with all in question, and well.. I'm confident that I might be able to get something sorted out without the need for any legal battles or anything like that.

The anon guy in question claims to have screenshots of the IP address being given out.... this sounds like bull++++.. I've asked for a copy of them... which hopefully he won't be able to give, in which case I'll say he has no evidence of any such activity, and ask him to stop pestering us.

If he does have any screenshots, it's highly doubtful they'll be from my site, so I should be able to distance myself from it.

Keep yah fingers crossed and I'll update you once I know anything new.

He has a screenshot of your moderator sitting behind his PC typing the IP address?

He says he has a screenshot of the page with his IP address on..

BUT

He's just come back to me saying that he in fact does NOT have a screenshot, therefore, has no proof that this site had anything to do with it.

I've not currently got a privicy policy on my site, but I'll soon be adding one stating that IP addresses are not classed as private.. that should hopefully put an end to the matter.

OK, here is the message I've sent to him.. hopefully it'll be the end of it.

Unless he paid for privacy rights @ your forum or you have that stated that he/she has those rights then you are pretty much safe on that but then the other guy should of subpoena your records since if your site is ip hide.
You might get in trouble for that as ppl do sell ip address for some odd reasons.

I've updated (or rather, just added) my privicy policy on the site: http://arathor.theice.co.uk/announcement.php?f=2 - hopefully that should help me out..

He's basically talking out of his backside in an effort to cause you trouble. IP addresses are not private, the system would not work if they were (every web server logs them). Ignore this idiot and he will go and find someone else to bug.

I've had someone leave because someone threatened to reveal their gender, had someone threaten to sue because of them being trolled back.

The internet is fun, but not everyone is cut out for it..

Cut and paste. :devious:

You are perfectly safe - You cannot be sued for purposefully or accidentally distributing a user's IP address...

Satan

I personally would igore him, and add the email address to auto delete or set to be reconized as spam to go into the spam filter folder. auto delete email if you can.

The person will continue as long as he / she thinks you are concerned or anoyed, eventually if you igore it, he/she will move on.

You could be... doesn't mean they'd win.

Well yes - I should rephrase to say that they could sue you for consuming more than your fair share of oxygen - However it is extremely unlikely that they'd win ;)

Satan

If, lets say, he did sue (which I don't will happen now, but still), and he lost... would I be able to get some compensation out of him? LOL maybe I should piss him off or something, make him try and sue me LOL ;)

He's all talk or he would have done something way before now. ;)

You have nothing whatsoever to worry about.

Why cant i have any fun? I would love for someone to threaten me with a lawsuit so I could laugh in their face.

If you could prove it caused you emotional or mental stress, loss of earnings or caused you to develop a mental illness, absolutely...

Satan

I suppose it is too late to advise you to ensure your correspondence to the idiot is always headed 'WITHOUT PREJUDICE' and to not include the final two most important legal words, despite the temptation, anywhere in your message - Naff Off! It could get a tad twitchy if you do!!!

Best of mate!!

heh-site doesn't exist anymore...

Oh yes it does... it's just moved: http://arathor.net/ ;) (that reminds me, I need to put the redirect back up)

Ahh cool. Glad the bad guy didn't get ya.

There's one born every minute and the internet is full of em, and you just met one!

So he's going to go to a solictor and say what. He wants to sue you because somebody on your site give his IP away which got him kicked from a gaming clan.

LOL

Haha my sentiments exactly. I'm actually in stitches.

If you own a board you will get threatened I had a user threaten me with a lawsuit if I banned him...

Thing is, if you are afraid you must be rich??? I mean.. they have to be able to take something... in my case I don't have anything anyone could take if somewhat brought a lawsuit against me and I lost.. judge would say 'congrats you won.... nothing..'

LOL

lol -

dude, (california native here), grab a cold one (beer) and let him sue you. first off, wtf is he suing you for in the first place? secondly, how can he prove you're involved? third, if you are found guilty (and then i'd be reading this under an umbrella because pigs are flying and their droppings are huuuuge), then exactly what damages would he be asking for?

i mean come on, can he put monetary damages on something like this?

rest assured that you can rest assured.

hehehehehhehe i cop this crap all the time on my forum,do as i do offer them $1 so they can go ring somebody that cares,some people thrive of trying cause admins stress,sleep well and forget about it,its only bluffing,testing your strength

There are no laws against it in the United States, but seeing how the UK is slowly becoming a socialist society, maybe it is against the law, but that would be stupid. I'd highly doubt it.

With all due respect to all the many great members we all have, on our various communities, there will always be 10, 15, 20 or so Jerks who make your life a living hell- at one time or another. I had an entire group of these types- they turned on me because I liked to keep things running My way (It was my website and my forum afterall) and I sold the place, they kept on and kept on- the new Management allowed it.

To be in the business of running forums, you must love and believe in what you are doing, otherwise, it just is not worth it. Those people caused me a lot of emotional stress, my fault, I allowed asses like that to bother me- but I did get death threats, my home address and phone numbers published in the open. And the best part of it all, they felt they were right to do so- and anything that happened at all, I was the blame of it...lol... Can we say raving Lunatics? Most of those are- the ones who will attack us, and in my case, I had legal means to get back at them.

This sounds interesting.........I have to ask...


details!!

Oh I have had already 2 threats for sueing and nobody sued me, lol.
The first one was a user who asked me to delete him cause he didn't want us to have his personal info (lol!). I said no as we never delete members, that's our policy and guess what? He did not sue us.
The second and most annoying one was the admin of another site which has one third of our members. I told him he had double accounts in his forum (I had evidence for it from one of his previous moderators that is now my friend) and he said he would sue me for that and bring as witnesses the persons I acussed to be his accounts. He even closed his forum for some days with a message that said (amongother things) that the site is in legal dispute.
However, regardless all these, he did not sue me, did nothing at all and re-opened his site after some days. I think he did it to attract new members but his site died after that. Most members he had stopped coming for some reason... Justice after all ;)

When clients/members/users/guests, etc. start threatening

• My service to them stops.
• They do not get a single response from me until they apologize.

I have learned the hard way that these pathetic individuals, many of whom are incapable of communicating in a mature and compassionate manner are not worthy of my time. It's what they want. Attention.

Usually you don't have to worry. Some sites though can and do bring up lawsuits (political ones come to mine), which are enforced. Another are over copyright issues.

But for giving IPs out and such, hardly, just to the nature of the internet with it being so open in the first place.

So don't sweat it until you actually get a legal notice, which is uncommon.

Chris
EDIT: Quoted the whole post!