I have a couple of friends who are lawyers and they are often commenting on the demise of the legal aid scheme in the UK. There isn’t enough money in it apparently to cover their costs. Most law small firms are considering abandoning it altogether and leaving it to the bigger firms to pick up the losses. Any farmers hearing about the lawyers’ loss of income, once they had got over their incredulity, would say (with great compassion): “You need to diversify and find new income streams.”
And the good or bad news (depending on where you are sitting on this one) is that some lawyers are doing just that, and the internet is becoming a possible new gravy train. Now some are learning that money can be made from blogs, chatrooms, and forums.
Some of us apparently seem to think that normal rules cease to exist when we are online - that we can say and do things without being held to account, especially if we write anonymously, or if we go to the effort to create a false, identity. But, exposing the identity of those who post damaging lies in cyberspace is a growth area for libel lawyers.
There were two cases last week where the courts pierced the apparent cloak of anonymity that bloggers and chatroom users had assumed, thinking that they could say whatever they liked.
Some very disgruntled Sheffield Wednesday fans wrote some defamatory things about the football club’s bosses in anonymous internet postings and may now face expensive libel claims. A high-court ruling last week is forcing the owner of a website to reveal their identity. In another high court case last week, John Finn, owner of the Sunderland property firm Pallion Housing, admitted that he was responsible for a website hosting a scurrilous internet campaign about a rival housing organisation, Gentoo Group, its employees and owner, Peter Walls. Those posting the comments went to considerable lengths to hide their identity, and Gentoo’s lawyers ran up a bill estimated to be about £300,000 - which Mr Finn will now have to pick up, along with any damages awarded.
Dominic Bray, of K&L Gates, Sheffield Wednesday’s solicitors, said: “There seem to be quite a lot of websites that are using their anonymity to make comments about people and think that there shouldn’t be any liability for it. But the internet is no different to any other place of publication, and if somebody is making defamatory comments about people then they should be held responsible for it. What these cases do is just confirm that’s the law - the law applies to the internet as much as it does to anything else.”
Crime committed on a computer is still a crime. Everything we do on a computer leaves a trace somewhere, and everything we do on the internet is logged. If we rob a house and leave a calling card, the police will come knocking. And now it appears, some lawyers are realising that seeking to trace electronic DNA is a pastime worth pursuing.
Spooky!
