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JudgeJudy
Unregistered User
(12/8/01 9:39 am)
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New court decisions regarding BBSs like this one
www.newsbytes.com/news/01/172455.html
Quote:

A California court of appeal recently issued what legal experts say is a precedent-setting decision on the right to make comments about a public company on Internet message boards.
...
ComputerXpress claimed defendants made "numerous false and disparaging statements" about the company on the Internet.
Defendants moved to dismiss the suit by seeking protection from a California law written to protect individuals from retaliatory lawsuits by corporations that feel they have been disparaged. These are referred to as "Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation," or SLAPP lawsuits.
...
The appellate court found that postings on an Internet message board constituted a "public forum," as defined in the anti-SLAPP statute. The court further ruled the defendants posted opinions as shareholders of ComputerXpress, not competitors, and the matter was therefore "an issue of public interest."
As for the content of the postings, the court said they "certainly could be considered disparaging," but found that, "their tone and content identified them as statements of opinion and not fact."
...
In the Global Telemedia case, the court said that, unlike many traditional media, there are no controls on the postings in chat rooms. As a result, such writings are almost always opinions, and therefore are protected under the First Amendment.
...
"We won attorney's fees upon rehearing," said Renfrew. "Not only is this case important in that it clarifies First Amendment protection for Internet postings, it is very important that people have the ability to recover fees. In many cases, people are silenced by the threat of a lawsuit because they cannot afford to spend $200,000 to defend themselves."


Standard Disclaimer: IANAL - I am not a lawyer.

Based on these court decisions in California (where both SRF and EZBoard are located), it would be very difficult for SRF to justify a suit against persons who post here. Most likely the case would be dismissed immediately. They could perhaps try to allege misappropriation of trade secrets or breaking of non-disclosure agreements that many ex-monastics signed. This seems unlikely to me. No one has yet posted anything resembling a "trade secret".

Regarding the NDAs -- SRF would be soundly thrashed in any court. An NDA is a contract; contracts must have consideration for both sides -- they both must profit. While SRF and the companies they are emulating with this technique make the argument that the money is sufficient compensation, there is a significant difference. The typical person leaving a company is not destitute and the company is not responsible for them -- they are just the employer. The typical monastic leaving has nothing -- literally. No financial resources, no work skills, not even normal clothes. This creates a coercion -- and the monastics are used to following blindly anyway. So it's "Sign or you'll end up in the homeless shelter." Courts have seen this kind of "contract" many times before and recognize it for what it is: exploitation. They typically award healthy damages to the exploited party as well as declaring the NDA invalid.

Surely SRF's legal people know this. Since they like to use suits so much, they must be experts by now. Knowing they would be beaten and subject to bad publicity as well, they will probably just leave everyone alone.

Still, it's probably a good idea to keep using pseudonyms. That helps to keep everything in the realm of "opinion" where it is unquestionably protected by the First Amendment right to Free Speech. After all, who could argue seriously that a post by "Judge Judy", (who is obviously not Judge Judy) contained any legal facts of any reliability whatsoever!

... of course, this is just my opinion :b

witness
Unregistered User
(12/8/01 4:18 pm)
Reply
Good Job, Judge Judy!
Thank you for helping remove some of the fog of paranoia that hangs over a great many Walrus board users (and, I suspect, potential users too nervous to join in the discussions).
Of course, as a wise man once pointed out, there's a word for the belief that someone is out to get you and you're mistaken, but there's no word for when someone actually is out to get you and you don't believe it.

premdas
Registered User
(12/9/01 12:14 am)
Reply
Dharma
Be brave all! Fight this battle.

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