On Internet Anonymity and Snake Oil Salesmen.
Over 100 years ago, the Rev. LaFayette Moore, a Baptist minister, gave up parish work and entered the business world with a pill cutter and gelatin coating machine. He rented one room over a carpenter shop. Money was short, and he obtained much of his raw materials on credit from Miller’s drug store in New York. Oscar Bell, a clerk in that store, vouched for Rev. Moore, subsequently borrowing to pay Rev. Moore’s outstanding bill.
Oscar had faith in the Rev. Moore, for Moore had acquired a recipe for curing the diarrhoea and ulcers that afflicted so many businessmen in New York.
That is to condense a very long story, but you get the idea.
You may wonder what this has to do with Internet anonymity. Surely anything to do with the Internet is new age, decades beyond snake oil salesmen in 19th century New York. Clean, digital, to say nothing of lawless and anarchic? The province of the young; a new world that they scamper over untrammelled?
Not at all, it is the long arm of the Rev. Moore that is reaching out, this time to create a little trouser staining of its own, and a fair few ulcers. How ironic that its victims may well be gulping down the product that belongs to their very persecutor.
40 years ago, the descendants of Rev Moore were the proud possessors of the patent for Furazolidone. A drug that was believed to be an effective cure for the bacterium that causes stomach ulcers, a bacterium that lives in the stomach of over half the world’s population.
(I can feel the ground trembling as Leg-Iron rises up in rage at this simplistic description of his specialist subject, thank-God its early morning, he won’t be around for several hours to vent his wrath!)
It was a valuable patent, and the owners were more than annoyed that ‘somebody’ was bringing unlicensed supplies of the drug into Britain, trouble was, they didn’t know who.
They knew a man who did though.
The Customs and Excise man who supervised the ships that carried the contraband Furazolidone. He wouldn’t tell them who was shipping the stuff, saying he had a duty of confidentiality to them.
In some jurisdictions, France amongst them, there is a legal requirement to come to the assistance of, say, a drowning man. There is no such requirement in Britain. You don’t have to save life unless you also have a duty of care towards the person – parent/child, employer/employee etc. yet the descendants of Rev Moore were able to rely on settled law that you can be compelled to assist a person who is suffering damage to their property.
The House of Lords ruled that the Customs and Excise, although an innocent party in all this, held information relating to unlawful conduct that was damaging the property – the patent, in this case – that belonged to someone who was suffering damage to that property. The principle of ‘discovery’ goes back to the Rev. Moore’s time, ironically for a cure for diarrhoea, in a case called Orr v Diaper. They had to hand over the information. It became known as the Norwich Pharmacal order.
It is that same order which has been developed to force innocent parties – Wikimedia, Facebook, Google, to hand over the names and addresses of internet users when there is a ‘reasonable basis’ to believe that they have been instrumental facilitators in assisting ‘damage’ to property, including the barely tangible – intellectual property, reputation, or privacy.
To read the main stream media you would believe that the mechanism by which Twitter and Internet providers are currently ‘being forced’ to hand over the names and addresses of the ‘forum furies’ and sick individuals who imagine the Internet is some sort of lawless society where they can freely defame, and conjure up their sick theories, is ‘new law’, part and parcel of the ‘out of control’ judiciary, making law to suit themselves, without reference to parliament. A breech of their ‘human right’ to ‘free speech’.
It isn’t, it is a 19th C remedy, applied to 21st C technology.
The forum furies and snake oil salesmen currently nursing letters from Mssrs Carter-Ruck are free to muse on the origins of their problems as they down their ulcer cures and fret that they might stain their trousers….
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June 11, 2011 at 12:04 -
“in a case called Orr v Diaper.” Diaper! Really?
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June 11, 2011 at 12:18 -
Hmm. Disagree on this one, Anna, or on some aspects of it.
There is also the question of jurisdiction, and that English Courts have no proper jurisdiction over California – which is why they have no leverage over Twitter, and South Tyneside Council have just spent perhaps £250k going through the proper channels to chase down a blogger.
It will be quite funny if the blogger turns out to have done the proper anonymous thing, and used a detection proof service and a proxy server, or turns out not to be whom the Council suspects, and has some comeback for defamation.
I sometimes wonder if the various Messrs Justice X imagine they are living in Georgian Times, and that the American War of Independence has not yet happened.
And I wonder why the US has just deemed it necessary to pass a law stating that English Court rulings should be restricted to … er … England.
I’d suggest that the English Courts – until they untwist their knickers – will remain a partial joke.
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June 11, 2011 at 13:15 -
June 11, 2011 at 13:31 -
It’s not really that funny that South Tyneside Council burnt through £250k. At least, not if you’re a South Tyneside ratepayer…
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June 11, 2011 at 14:17 -
I’d find it amusing – in the same way as a Dr’s Surgery down the road here, with solar panels on a flattish west-facing roof, with the whole roof smack bang up against a row of trees which block out the sun for the entire summer – is funny.
You either laugh, or cry, or both.
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June 11, 2011 at 16:12 -
Both, at the same time..?
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June 11, 2011 at 16:29 -
This is a good point, the council “chiefs” imagine themselves to be some kind of feudal lords who can do with, as they wish with the serfs offerings.
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June 13, 2011 at 18:38 -
And I wonder why the US has just deemed it necessary to pass a law stating that English Court rulings should be restricted to … er … England.
I think that is mostly related to Mr Justice Eady and his stream of cases which made US publications answerable to English libel law, particularly the Polanski case in which Schillings were exceptionally proud of reminding the world that their client was, by today’s standards, a very nasty child-sex offender, when everyone had nearly forgotten as it was so long ago. They still claim to have won that one in the courts, failing to note that Polanski is PNG and will be until the day he dies.
For their part, the English courts seem to be insisting that if a thing is read here, the publisher is answerable here. Good luck with that one.
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June 11, 2011 at 12:25 -
On the specifics, and for anyone who hasn’t followed the issue, my understanding is that the Ryan Giggs case was pursued for disclosure through the English Courts. This has not – as far as I kn0w – worked, and has left the English Courts looking like Colonel Blimp.
While the South Tyneside case has been pursued via the California Courts, which has worked on a default ruling (as the Councillor targeted offered no defence) rather than as a result of a hearing, with which Twitter complied.
As I say above, I think there are wider issues here.
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June 11, 2011 at 13:10 -
There certainly are wider issues, such as the council using taxpayers money to pursue an order which can only generate information to support defamation proceedings brought by individual councillors. Councils are forbidden by law to fund legal actions brought by councillors or council employees. The Californian court proceedings don’t quite fall into that category, but they’re arguably the legal spadework prior to such proceedings, and those council workers who’ve recently become ex-council workers due to austerity cuts, might question the decision to piss a quarter of a million pounds up a rope to back up a potential libel claim made by individual councillors.
Another fact worth considering is that the House of Lords case Anna links to involved disclosure of evidence regarding an obvious and indisputable tort (unlicensed importation of the drugs). In this case, the disclosure order was sought in furtherance of a rather more speculative claim for defamation which cannot even be pursued by the body seeking the disclosure order.
As regards the whole forum furies / fornicating footballers fracas, isn’t there a measure of having your cake and eating it too about that, Anna? Criticising those who dedicated so much effort to the (only slightly utterly pointless) effort of publicising Ryan Giggs’ inability to keep his trousers zipped sits uncomfortably with your piece yesterday criticising his hypocrisy, given that we’d be entirely unaware of his hypocrisy were it not for the forum furies you pour such opprobrium on.
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June 11, 2011 at 13:30 -
The ‘forum furies’ outed Ryan Giggs? You amaze me, I thought it was the main stream media……….
By the way psychonaut99, I take it you are aware of which ‘forum furies’ are currently nursing letters from Carter-Ruck? And you are in support of them? Really?
I think they are the sickest individuals I have ever had the misfortune to come across, and there is no level of opprobrium that I would consider out of proportion to pour on them. A Tsunami of opprobrium.
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June 11, 2011 at 13:59 -
I guess it depends on what you mean by mainstream media. Giggs’ was outed on Twitter by an anonymous poster who may or may not have been a restaurant critic for a major newspaper.
As to supporting forum furies who’ve received letters from Carter-Fuck, that firm sends out loads of threatening letters to all sorts of people whether what those people have said or written is defamatory or not. The receipt of a letter from C-F is a less reliable proof of wrongdoing than being arrested by the West Midlands Serious Crime Squad.
I have no idea which specific forum furies you’re referring to, nor what they’re supposed to have said. What I do know is that Giggs’ was outed anonymously by an Internet poster in a flagrant breach of a court injunction. That poster regarded the Internet as a lawless society in the same way as the FFs. And at least one of his or her claims was wrong and potentially defamatory.
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June 11, 2011 at 16:14 -
“The receipt of a letter from C-F is a less reliable proof of wrongdoing than being arrested by the West Midlands Serious Crime Squad.”
Or, as it turned out, being prosecuted under ‘Operation Ore’…
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June 11, 2011 at 13:32 -
“…and those council workers who’ve recently become ex-council workers due to austerity cuts, might question the decision to piss a quarter of a million pounds up a rope to back up a potential libel claim made by individual councillors.”
I rather doubt the sort of people likely to have been employed by them possess such introspection…
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June 11, 2011 at 13:43 -
That’s a slightly sweeping generalisation, isn’t it? Anyone who is employed by a local council, from a cleaner to a CEO is incapable of introspection.
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June 11, 2011 at 16:12 -
True, it’s a little unfair on the cleaner, who probably is capable of that…
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June 11, 2011 at 22:28 -
I ruddy well hope so.
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June 11, 2011 at 16:07 -
It’s a situation where I don’t think you can apply a black or white judgement. It’s about magnitude and significance.
If two people choose to gossip while walking down a street about the sex life of a famous person, the comments they make may or may not contravene the terms of a super-injunction. They may or may not be defamatory. If you celebrate the downing of forum gossips and conspriacy theorists then the logical next step is to put a chip in everyone’s sock to monitor who or what they are talking about or ‘defaming’.
Two football clubs sued their own independent fans’ forums and attempted to close them down because of a few supporters saying not very nice and potentially defamatory things about board members. You’re talking about a couple of hundred people at the most reading this stuff, many of whom would immediately dismiss it as nonsense anyway.
Where do you draw the line? All these networks have done is brought the gossip of the workplace and the street onto the internet – if you drive it offline people will still talk about this stuff amongst themselves. I just choose to ignore most of it and suspect I’m far from alone.
Sometimes of course it gets out of hand and results in serious damage being done, but these cases can be judged on their merits and appropriate actions taken. Anna – let the sickos peddle their theories becuase they’re just talking amongst themselves most of the time.
http://outspokenrabbit.blogspot.com/ -
June 11, 2011 at 16:10 -
Let the sickos peddle their theories – aren’t they just talking amongst themselves anyway?
http://outspokenrabbit.blogspot.com/ -
June 11, 2011 at 16:12 -
Let the sickos have the internet to peddle their theories – best leaving them to talk amongst themselves than bore the rest of us to death.
The sensible amongst us can just switch the channel over, can’t we?
http://outspokenrabbit.blogspot.com/
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June 11, 2011 at 19:05 -
Seventeen comments in and Leg-Iron still hasn’t surfaced?
Must’ve been single malt night at the smoky-drinky yesterday… -
June 11, 2011 at 21:11 -
It’s early yet. The sun hasn’t even gone down.
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June 12, 2011 at 08:51 -
June 12, 2011 at 09:01 -
June 12, 2011 at 14:01 -
Anna -”I think they are the sickest individuals I have ever had the misfortune to come across, and there is no level of opprobrium that I would consider out of proportion to pour on them”…….
Don’t you think that your undeniable disgust at this one group of ‘gossipers’ is affecting your judgment concerning the wider implications.
Anyone know what the difference is between highly renumerated PR/media personnel and ‘snake-oil salesmen?…thats a rhetorical question by the way!
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June 12, 2011 at 15:08
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June 12, 2011 at 20:26 -
Hypothetically speaking, If one wished to express themselves in a way that could be offensive to the celebrities/councils/politician then they could simply take a few extra steps. No more than 15 minutes of preparation or automated if you have regular need for such amusement.
Using Firefox extentions for free, get an HTTPS proxy, connect to this proxy, additionally navigate to a webbased proxy(www.hidemyass.com) to further cloud the trail, (Use TOR if you are offending Governments) , google the name of a temp email service, get temp email.
Use temp email to create new twitter account.
With no followers or following no one. Simply post information using a popular #hashtag. This ensuring the twittersphere gains knowledge. Sit back, Laugh and giggle at the expensive attempts to locate you.
If they do get your email or your twitter account details all they will have is the IP address of a Proxy server somewhere in the world, If they manage to get the logs (Unlikely) this will point them to another Proxy Server. Many Proxies do not maintain logs are outside the UK Courts reach.
TOR is total protection and uses several related technologies to completely hide your tracks.
It is also possible to use https with twitter to ensure no localised collection.
If you were totally paranoid use a PAYG phone in a public WiFI spot.
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June 12, 2011 at 20:39 -
I forgot to mention the Obvious. Please turn off GPS location services on your device and twitter account.
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