It would seem that I had shaken up a few things in the Flickr World since I wrote my article on Cyber Bullying, and used the real life example of my friend who was cyber-bullied by a Flickr member.
It would appear that the person who I wrote the article on was not prepared to give in that easily. He had made himself become an Admin of the Christianity Discussion Group, deleted my post, closed off his own post so that nobody could protest, and sent a threatening message to me via my friend who was the victim of the bullying, that if I did not delete every single post I had made in all of the discussion groups I had made mention of his name, he was going to sue me for defamation:
"Your contact whom you got to weasel information out of me has messed up badly. By writing that article on various groups he has breached Australian Defamation Law. That is serious and has exposed himself to prosecution under Australian law.
You would be advised to tell him to either delete all posts or remove all reference to me as otherwise I will consider legal action against him as a private individual. Such action will be succesful as the breach is real. Also by placing multiple copies of the article on various groups he exposes himself to secondary charges.
His article is an actual, serious and provable breach of Law so to avoid costly legal and personal proceedings I would urge you to advise him to delete or amend all articles to remove both my name plus all reference to me at his earliest convenience. That may work in his favour to an extent.
He may also wish to obtain a second legal opinion which will only verify the stupidity of his foolish actions which were on your behalf. We all know that when such proceedings do eventuate that neither you or his religious organization will support him.
He has also breached the Yahoo TOS by using their forums to defame and I will refer that to my contacts at Yahoo for their information.
Bob, never get someone else to do your dirty work for you as he is the one who faces a high chance of legal proceedings. We detected virtually right from the start he was acting on your behalf and fed him "information" and "carrots" as stated previously." (11 April 2009)
Naturally, I was a bit worried about this, and read everything I could about the defamation laws in Australia. This is what I found out:
The Defamation laws of Australia define a defamation offence as an accusation or statement, either written or verbal, about a person, that would cause others to to either hate, despise or be treat that person badly. A defamation offence can be established if:
* The accusation was made to a third party
* Identifies the person by name or reference and
* Contains a clear defamatory statement.
According to this definition, I am liable and could be found guilty in a court of law, should this man decide to carry out his threat. However...
Defences against such a law suit can be the following:
* Fair Comment (if it is an expression of an honestly held opinion or a criticism on a subject matter of public interest)
* Truth/Justification
* You had a duty to provide information
Supposing this man were to carry out his threat against me, I would be able to defend myself on the grounds that what I wrote was the truth, and that I had a duty to warn other people of this man and his motivations, because if he can get away from doing it to one person, he could try and do it again to someone else, and I did not want anybody to suffer the same way my friend had suffered. Plus, with all of the information I had gathered, I could easily say that under the definition of the Australian Defamation laws, this man himself has committed offence, in that he publicly produced an email written by my friend to third party members, in the attempt of ruining his reputation...
...However, because the Australian Government is constantly revising Australian Defamation Law, especially with regarding online claims, if this man were to pursue this further, it could go either way for me. I could either be found in the clear, based on the evidence I would be presenting in my defence, or I would have to either pay a fine or serve time in jail. I understand that the laws of this country are not perfect, but if these laws are able to be twisted in such a way as to protect the very perpetrators that that these laws are crying out against, what point is there for having these laws to begin with?
In any event, I am prepared for whatever this man decides on doing, but should anything happen to me, just know that there are loop holes in the system that need to be fixed, that the fight against cyber bullying is real and that it in order to combat and successfully defeat cyber bullying, we MUST be able to do this collectively, not individually. It must be confronted head-on in a group effort....
References:
http://www.efa.org.au/Issues/Censor/defamation.html
http://www.artslaw.com.au/LegalInformation/Defamation/DefamationLawsAfterJan06.asp
http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/dissent/documents/defamation.html
( Click here to read part 3)
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