18 September 2007, 14:31 in

Firm sues internet forum to silence critics

From an article in the Sydney Morning Herald:

In a move that could set a nasty precedent for Australian website operators and their users, a software firm is suing a community website over comments published on its message board.

The firm, 2Clix, is suing the owner of the popular broadband community site Whirlpool, Simon Wright, for “injurious falsehood”, asking for $150,000 in damages and an injunction requiring Whirlpool to remove forum threads highly critical of 2Clix’s accounting software.

I have a couple of issues with this.

First of all, I believe that a person should be allowed to express opinions about a company or product, be they negative or positive (provided they can back them up). I believe that allowing open criticism is healthy on the whole. A decent product should tend to get decent reviews, and an inferior product should tend to get negative reviews. The internet simply makes peoples’ opinions accessible to a vast audience. Some companies will benefit from this, others will lose out. That’s life.

An opinion is just that, and cannot be verified as being correct or incorrect. As long as an opinion is not passed off as fact, and as long as it can be backed up, then no one should take issue with it.

We seem to be reaching a point (or have we already passed it?) where laws and regulations put companies and businesses first ahead of people. We should not be protecting companies at the expense of consumers’ rights.

The second issue that I have a problem with is that Whirlpool forums should not be the target of litigation – they are merely providing a way for people with a similar interest to communicate on in a convenient manner. They are not the authors or owners of the content.

Imagine if, instead of posting on an internet forum, someone had picked up the phone and called everyone they knew and told them about their negative experiences with company XXX’s product. This is no different in effect – same message, just different communication medium. Who would the company sue in this case? Maybe the person’s phone provider, for enabling them to make phone calls?

If 2Clix were to win this court case it would have disastrous consequences… Hello police state! Fortunately, I don’t think it is very likely.

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