Can a legitimate forum post become illegal a year later?
Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2014-07-11 08:34:31 - Graham Ellis
I am not one for re-writing history. I will go back and correct typos in a post, and I will add updates onto the end of a story (or even cut them into the text with a date of change / amendment note), but I dislike changing things invisibly, or removing material which it's no longer convenient to display.
But over the past couple of days, I've been come across a case where a legitimate forum post - simply quoting text for comment from a newspaper article - was legitimate in February 2013, but is (I am informed) no longer so. I am told that's because "the article is now inaccurate as it quotes significantly from and is based on a Court of Appeal judgment which has since been overturned by the UK Supreme Court."
The request requirement that I remove the post and ensuing discussion from our forum came in strong legalistic terms - I felt bullied - and with a degree of reluctance I have removed the post and just left a safe holding page at [here]. I don't believe the post was wrong in the first place, and I'm not sure that even now it would have been wrong as a historic record with a prominent extra note referring to the decision of the higher court. However, we've not got the timenor resources to take a principled stand and without admission of any error (I don't think there was any, at any point) have removed the post and all the comments made thereon.
In the specifics of the case, I have considerable sympathy for the key person involved who appears in the final judgement to have been put through a very long legal process ending up with an "innocent" verdict. I wouldn't wish that on anyone. In the generality, I have severe reservations about the changes that I made - I will say "had to make" pragmatically, but I still feel it's wrong to rewrite history.