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Dr Matthew Garrett v Dr Roy Schestowitz and Anor

caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk

11–20 of 102 posts

Re: Dr Matthew Garrett v Dr Roy Schestowitz and Anor

#11
post #2

Basically Matthew Garret sued owners of www.techrights.org and news.tuxmachines.org for libel, was successful and was awarded £70,000 in damages. > 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,…

> £70,000 in "damages"

Damn, libel law is ridiculous.

Re: Dr Matthew Garrett v Dr Roy Schestowitz and Anor

#12
post #9
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, I had noticed Techrights had it out for MG, but I never understood why. I still do not know the reason for TR to go after him.

According to the judgement, it appears that techrights and tuxmachines do experience real harassment and have convinced themselves that MG is behind it all. From their perspective, they're retaliating with the same force MG is supposedly using against them. I could understand that, if MG was actually behind the harassment, which this lawsuit would be the best place possible to lay out their proof for but ended up not…

> ended up not being convincing enough

From my limited (non-lawyer) reading of this, they didn't actually offer any evidence. I'm not sure if they had any evidence or not. But it appears that they represented themselves and didn't go through the proper procedures for offering evidence or witnesses. So all they could do was cross-examine.

My reading (from just the judgement posted) is that it is a sad thing that it came to a legal dispute at all.

Re: Dr Matthew Garrett v Dr Roy Schestowitz and Anor

#13
post #2

Basically Matthew Garret sued owners of www.techrights.org and news.tuxmachines.org for libel, was successful and was awarded £70,000 in damages. > 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,…

> £70,000 in "damages" Damn, libel law is ridiculous.

UK libel law is very friendly to the plaintiff.

Re: Dr Matthew Garrett v Dr Roy Schestowitz and Anor

#15
post #2

Basically Matthew Garret sued owners of www.techrights.org and news.tuxmachines.org for libel, was successful and was awarded £70,000 in damages. > 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,…

> £70,000 in "damages" Damn, libel law is ridiculous.

Is it though?

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

Re: Dr Matthew Garrett v Dr Roy Schestowitz and Anor

#16
post #9
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, I had noticed Techrights had it out for MG, but I never understood why. I still do not know the reason for TR to go after him.

According to the judgement, it appears that techrights and tuxmachines do experience real harassment and have convinced themselves that MG is behind it all. From their perspective, they're retaliating with the same force MG is supposedly using against them. I could understand that, if MG was actually behind the harassment, which this lawsuit would be the best place possible to lay out their proof for but ended up not…

What was TR/TM’s evidence that it was MG that was harassing them?

Re: Dr Matthew Garrett v Dr Roy Schestowitz and Anor

#17
post #2

Basically Matthew Garret sued owners of www.techrights.org and news.tuxmachines.org for libel, was successful and was awarded £70,000 in damages. > 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,…

> £70,000 in "damages" Damn, libel law is ridiculous.

Hard to tell if you are arguing whether 70k is ridiculously large or ridiculously small.

Re: Dr Matthew Garrett v Dr Roy Schestowitz and Anor

#18
post #9
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, I had noticed Techrights had it out for MG, but I never understood why. I still do not know the reason for TR to go after him.

According to the judgement, it appears that techrights and tuxmachines do experience real harassment and have convinced themselves that MG is behind it all. From their perspective, they're retaliating with the same force MG is supposedly using against them. I could understand that, if MG was actually behind the harassment, which this lawsuit would be the best place possible to lay out their proof for but ended up not…

> but ended up not being convincing enough not to cost them 70k pounds

It might end up being more than 70k£ for them, given MG's legal fees may not be included in that price (I can't see any indication either way)

Re: Dr Matthew Garrett v Dr Roy Schestowitz and Anor

#19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> £70,000 in "damages" Damn, libel law is ridiculous.

Is it though? 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…

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.

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