If someone posts a huge amount of articles about how you are various non-good things, then a employer might do a simple Google of your name on and think "Oh, actually, I don't think I want to hire that guy" that's worth quite a lot of money if that's a job that you actually wanted to get (and that results in a loss of income/opportunities)
Typically speaking, you should probably only be saying things on the internet or otherwise that you have serious evidence for. One, to avoid looking like a complete idiot in case you're wrong or in a more serious case to stop you from being sued for libel
It blows my mind how various parts of the wider world are seemingly quite happy to ("joking" or not) call each other pedophiles or various other things in a age where things are aggressively indexed by search engines or (worse) LLMs
Yep if you ask Google what Matthew Garrett's reputation is, its AI description includes the (libellous!) accusation of "professional troll". Incredibly, the original articles are still up.
It also matters - or at least, should - whether you're expressing your opinion ("this guy is a fucking asshole"), vs. a claim of fact ("that diver is a pedophile").
I would not particularly want to express myself in a world where calling someone an asshole has a non-trivial chance of costing me £70k plus court fees.
The statements motivating this lawsuit included a lot more than just calling him an asshole. They called him a habitual cocaine user and accused him of orchestrating a harassment campaign. Those are claims of fact, and false accusations of that kind widely read in the victim’s professional and academic communities could certainly cause more than £70k plus court fees in eventual damages through reduced lifetime earnings.
Disclaimer: Being a (currently quite inactive) member of the Debian project myself, I’ve met Matthew Garrett in the past on a relatively small number of occasions, but I have no inside information on the allegations mentioned in this court judgment and have not discussed them with him or with anyone else involved. I do, however, believe his side of the story based on what context I have about him.
The judge takes all of that into account when determining damages. The fee is based on an earlier lawsuit, with inflation added:
> Mr Hamer asks for a single global sum to vindicate Dr Garrett’s reputation and compensate him for distress in relation to all the publications complained of. He proposed a range of comparator decisions for my consideration, in support of a submission that libel damages approaching £100,000 would be appropriate. I have considered these. I noted in particular the case of Fentiman v Marsh [2019] EWHC 2099 in which an award of £55,000 was made in respect of allegations in a blog read by about 500 people that the claimant, a company CEO, was a hacker responsible for illegal cyber-attacks on a company. The tone of the allegations there were something comparable to those in the present case – somewhat personally and floridly put. I hold the effects of inflation in mind.
> In my judgment, in all these circumstances, the minimum sum necessary to convince a fair-minded bystander of the baselessness of the allegations against him, to vindicate his reputation and restore his standing, and to compensate him for the consequences he has suffered, is £70,000.
The fact techrights is a somewhat popular and respected publication on free software (at least by some circles) probably cost them.
This isn't just about someone calling someone else an asshole, this is about a long and continuous series of accusations and (now legally confirmed) libel, neatly documented and organised on a dedicated hate page: https://techrights.org/wiki/Matthew_J_Garrett/ Looking at the dates on those links, they were especially active during August of 2023, accusing him of everything from misogyny and racism to committing hate crimes.
Sure but to my knowledge you can call someone an asshole in the UK without being at risk of libel but calling someone a [pedophile/drug addict/similar] is (and IMO should) come with consequences if unsubstantiated
Taken literally it's accusing someone of a specific depraved act, but it's also clearly a term of abuse. My guess (not a lawyer!) is that once a term becomes more associated with abuse the more you're protected.
Hustler basically called Jerry Falwell a motherf!cker but attributed to him a specific act, which they highlighted was satire and not to be taken seriously. Hustler lost in a jury trial and also on an appeal to the 4th circuit. The Supreme Court eventually ruled in Hustler's favor [0]. This is dramatized in the movie The People vs Larry Flint.
> Taken literally it's accusing someone of a specific depraved act, but it's also clearly a term of abuse. My guess (not a lawyer!) is that once a term becomes more associated with abuse the more you're protected.
Computer people have this weird notion that courts are like a computer program. If x == "foo" then punishment.
That's not how it works. The use of any specific word does not determine in and of itself if something is an assertion of fact or an assertion of opinion. It depends on how you're using the word.
> The use of any specific word does not determine in and of itself if something is an assertion of fact or an assertion of opinion. It depends on how you're using the word.
Yes that's the point I'm making. The entire thread is about which words you can get sued over libel for, which isn't how it works.
> Computer people have this weird notion that courts are like a computer program. If x == "foo" then punishment.
This seems unnecessarily insulting, especially since your comment is just a repeat of mine with the relevant details removed.
Haha, I know, thanks :). I don't mind saying it... it's just such a raw word and I wanted people to focus on the substance without aggressively escalating the potty mouth in the thread.
it's interesting how differently people perceive it. Motherfucker is something I'd have called a parent in a card game if they bested me, or an exclamation said aloud from dropping a wallet while walking. Very little significance to it.
No, while abstractly “X is an asshole” can be a statement of literal fact, in the concrete case where X is a person capable of bringing a defamation suit, it is not realistically possible that “X is an asshole” can be interpreted by a reasonable member of the audience (listener, reader, etc., depending on media) as such a statement; it clearly is a subjective statement of opinion of character.
Meanwhile, a pedophile is something that a person capable of bringing a defamation suit could also literally be, and where a reasonable member of the audience for a description of them as such might (given the right other circumstances) view the description as a literal fact claim.
"This guys is an asshole" is pretty clearly a subjective opinion I hold about a person, one that others might disagree with.
"That diver is a pedophile" is pretty clearly a factual statement, implying that the person abuses kids, or has been convicted of such. (I know that, uh, the original statement was basically just an insult, but: it does posit a fact.)
The judgments in these cases take all of the context into consideration.
In general, though, accusing someone of pedophilia is substantially more serious than calling them an asshole. The former has objective meaning and can be associated with crimes against minor victims. The latter just means you don’t like someone.
Everything anyone says is an "opinion" according to some definitions of "opinion." The distinction here is whether something is a claim of fact or simply a claim. A claim of fact is something that can be verified through some sort of objective measurement or detection.
"Some pigs fly," "Bill Johnson signed over his rights to the song," and "This fish is 3 pounds, 4 ounces" are claims of fact.
"Some pigs are beautiful," "Bill Johnson writes too many songs," and "People who catch fish are probably the same type of people who support terrorists" are just claims.
The problem is that viewing this as justice relies on an assumption that the legal system fully resolves, as if everyone who is wronged can be made whole. For example in this case - there is some third unknown party carrying out the harassment, against which Techrights would have a much higher bar to bring their own suit and recover their own damages (assuming discovery even went anywhere, and the person wasn't judgement proof). So Techrights is basically left "holding the bag" at the discontinuity between anonymous anarchistic free speech and trying to bring it into the realm of trustable statements by known identities and institutions.
Merely adjudicating truthfulness with injunctive relief might be understandable in this day and age of persistent shameless lying. But the hefty monetary damages for what seems to be good faith (though seemingly entirely unsupported and possibly even delusional [0]) speech is a tough pill to swallow.
[0] I took a quick scan through Techrights's wiki page "documenting" all this and the only thing substantiating the connection I could find was Garrett and the IRC harasser ping-timing-out at the same time. But there are many different ways that could happen. Yet every screenshot is captioned as if it was definitely Garrett saying those things.
> The problem is that viewing this as justice relies on an assumption that the legal system fully resolves, as if everyone who is wronged can be made whole.
Are you suggesting being the victim of a crime should give you the right to hurt other people? Unrelated people at that?
Two wrongs do not make a right. I think it is entirely just to punish wrongdoers even if some other unknown party has also wronged the wrong doer at some point in the past.
> But the hefty monetary damages for what seems to be good faith (though seemingly entirely unsupported and possibly even delusional [0])
How could entirely unsupported speech ever be in good faith?
First, I never said anyone has the right to hurt other people. In fact I explicitly said I understood the injunctive relief. As for making the libeled whole, surely if the reach of a well-known blog is sufficient to cause significant damage to someone's reputation, then removing the posts and issuing a longstanding correction on the same blog should come close to repairing it [0].
Second, the two wrongs are directly related in that one caused the other, as a result of the victim trying to figure out who was responsible and/or delusionally focusing on the wrong person because of the harassment. The point is that the more above-board instance of speech is being legally punished (talking in terms of names and real-world identities), whereas the less above board speech is not (because doing so is up against the limit of anonymous communications).
> How could entirely unsupported speech ever be in good faith?
In this case, it seems due to some kind of delusional thinking that is seeing a connection where one does not exist, or at least cannot be substantiated. But regardless, Techrights seems to earnestly believe Garrett is behind the harassment, as opposed to say knowingly making false statements to damage his reputation.
[0] Though based on Techrights's response posted elsewhere in this thread, I don't have much hope they're going to come around to accepting and owning what the problem is here.
If someone posts a huge amount of articles about how you are various non-good things, then a employer might do a simple Google of your name on and think "Oh, actually, I don't think I want to hire that guy" that's worth quite a lot of money if that's a job that you actually wanted to get (and that results in a loss of income/opportunities)
Typically speaking, you should probably only be saying things on the internet or otherwise that you have serious evidence for. One, to avoid looking like a complete idiot in case you're wrong or in a more serious case to stop you from being sued for libel
It blows my mind how various parts of the wider world are seemingly quite happy to ("joking" or not) call each other pedophiles or various other things in a age where things are aggressively indexed by search engines or (worse) LLMs