Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2008-12-12 07:38:05 - Graham Ellis
I got an email on Tuesday that I would describe as aggressive in its approach, accusing me of libelling various people, and demanding that I remove that material from my site.
Problem was ... the retired senior business man had got hold of the wrong end of the stick. I hadn't even heard of the people I was accused of libelling, and a quick look into the facts of the case lead me to an obscure link from a previous article here to a site that's nothing to do with me, and about which I even said "I cannot, of course, confirm that the information on this other site is correct". It wasn't even the page that I linked to that contains the material that is considered inappropriate - you actually have to follow links to other pages to find it.
With such a senior figure, who had copied his email to a solicitor and also to a senior member of a local business organisation in North and West Wilts, I had to take the matter seriously and this lead me to thinking Can a web content provider responsible for the content of sites that he links to?
Views on this appear to differ - with the Gent in question contending that a web site owner IS responsible for what he links to (and sending me the URL of his own site which, when you look around it has no outside links) taking one view, and nearly everyone else taking the opposite view. My goodness - where would Google be if they could not provide links to external sites?
I have advised the gentleman in question that he has got the wrong of the stick in attributing the content of that other site to me, and given him contact details from that other site and from the domain registrar's site so that he can take the matter up directly with them. And it has been suggested to him by the other kind folks he copied in that he's attempting to shoot the messenger. That should be another cue for a photograph to illustrate a proverb, but shooting the messenger can get very messy, but messengers are often useful people to have around and you don't want to go round shooting them just for a picture - you never know when they could be useful to you, alive, later.
Problem was ... the retired senior business man had got hold of the wrong end of the stick. I hadn't even heard of the people I was accused of libelling, and a quick look into the facts of the case lead me to an obscure link from a previous article here to a site that's nothing to do with me, and about which I even said "I cannot, of course, confirm that the information on this other site is correct". It wasn't even the page that I linked to that contains the material that is considered inappropriate - you actually have to follow links to other pages to find it.