Someone wants to sue me

[Ninth Dimension]

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?