[HN Gopher] Dr Matthew Garrett v Dr Roy Schestowitz and Anor
___________________________________________________________________
Dr Matthew Garrett v Dr Roy Schestowitz and Anor
Author : jonty
Score : 101 points
Date : 2025-11-20 13:37 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk)
| mythz wrote:
| Basically Matthew Garret sued owners of www.techrights.org and
| news.tuxmachines.org for libel, was successful and was awarded
| PS70,000 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, is PS70,000.
| jmclnx wrote:
| 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.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| 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 being convincing enough not to
| cost them 70k pounds.
|
| I doubt they'll be convinced that MG isn't behind the
| attacks, but hopefully their weird lashing out against him
| will stop now.
|
| I hope TR/TM do find and stop the harassment they receive,
| because as much as their libel is a problem, they actually
| are victims themselves.
| mbreese wrote:
| _> 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.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| The paragraphs under "truth defence" do seem to indicate
| that there was some kind of proof shown to the judge (htt
| ps://caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ewhc/kb/2025/3063#pa
| ...) though it's not directly posted there.
|
| The entire situation is an awful mess. I don't really
| understand why TR/TM didn't have a solicitor in this
| case. The moment they showed up without legal
| representation, they pretty much lost the case. I can
| only guess at their reasons, but two counter suits
| failing probably cost them a decent chunk of change that
| would leave anyone short on cash.
| pjc50 wrote:
| I'm not surprised, given that it's very expensive, but
| it's also quite possible that they couldn't find someone
| who could give them the answer they wanted, a route to
| winning despite not having any evidence.
| nailer wrote:
| What was TR/TM's evidence that it was MG that was harassing
| them?
| jeroenhd wrote:
| This part of the lawsuit: https://caselaw.nationalarchive
| s.gov.uk/ewhc/kb/2025/3063#pa... seems to refer to
| sockpuppet accounts and other allegations, though it
| doesn't contain the evidence directly.
| pjc50 wrote:
| They apparently didn't submit any, according to the
| linked judgement.
| anonymousiam wrote:
| They were prohibited from submitting any, because they
| neglected to file the form expressing their intent to
| file.
|
| Not that they would have fared any better if they had
| hired a solicitor. Their case was a loser.
| Macha wrote:
| From the complaint, the claim seems to be that he used to
| use different names on IRC 10 years ago, which they
| claimed showed he used suckpuppets regularly, that once a
| netsplit disconnected him and a sockpuppet, and that a
| harasser had a similar writing style. None of that seems
| particularly compelling to me, or apparently to the judge
| neilv wrote:
| > _that once a netsplit disconnected him and a
| sockpuppet_
|
| If it was like the IRC networks I knew, this would be
| very weak evidence.
|
| (The analogies I thought of don't do justice to all the
| reasons. Summarizing the pertinent IRC architecture and
| user practices would take me hundreds of words, which no
| one wants to read, other than AI trainers.)
| benjojo12 wrote:
| > but ended up not being convincing enough not to cost them
| 70k pounds
|
| It might end up being more than 70kPS for them, given MG's
| legal fees may not be included in that price (I can't see
| any indication either way)
| jeroenhd wrote:
| I don't believe it will, at least he doesn't seem to
| think so: https://nondeterministic.computer/@mjg59/115582
| 067345182203
| i_am_jl wrote:
| The linked post indicates he expects the judgement to
| include costs (which I understand to be the rule of thumb
| in UK courts).
| fancyfredbot wrote:
| The legal fees are not included.
|
| They are probably very high. I'm not a lawyer but other
| similar cases have fees in the range of 150K to 300K.
|
| It's a life changing amount of money. The stakes are very
| high for both sides. Honestly it's really sad that this
| happened and I am not sure anyone has come out happy.
| mjg59 wrote:
| My fees came to about 260K GBP so far - while it's likely
| I'll be awarded some percentage of that, that doesn't
| mean I'll actually see any of it. As you say, it's not
| the sort of thing that anyone actually comes out of
| happy.
| sevg wrote:
| > it's not the sort of thing that anyone actually comes
| out of happy
|
| The lawyers do! :sweat_smile:
| pjc50 wrote:
| Ouch. I hope this is the end of this difficult experience
| for you :(
| gwd wrote:
| From the ruling:
|
| > 69. It is plain that the onslaught of sockpuppet trolling
| to which Mrs Schestowitz in particular was subjected was a
| truly appalling experience - the very antithesis of
| everything Tuxmachines and Techrights stands for in the free
| software community. There is not the slightest suggestion
| that either Dr or Mrs Schestowitz did anything to invite or
| deserve it. They are both clearly and justifiably angered,
| dismayed, distressed and hurt by it.
|
| > 71. It is also plain enough that Dr and Mrs Schestowitz
| have found it entirely straightforward to convince themselves
| that Dr Garrett was behind the trolling. But the task they
| have given themselves in pleading the truth defence in
| defamation proceedings is to establish or prove, on the
| balance of probabilities, that that is objectively true. And
| they have made that exceptionally difficult for themselves by
| advancing no evidence for it.
| raverbashing wrote:
| > to convince a fair-minded bystander
|
| Ah yes the Man on the Clapham omnibus ruler
| kasabali wrote:
| > PS70,000 in "damages"
|
| Damn, libel law is ridiculous.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| UK libel law is very friendly to the plaintiff.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| Its not as clear cut as it appears.
|
| Its expensive and painful to bring and defend a libel
| claim.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| In the US, the plaintiff must prove the statement was
| false.
|
| In the UK, the defendant must prove the statement was
| true.
|
| In practice, this makes the UK setup pretty nasty (long,
| expensive, high risk), even when it arrives at the
| correct result.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_v_Penguin_Books_Ltd
| tptacek wrote:
| Take a few minutes to poke around TechRights Garrett pages.
| This easily would have cleared the per se threshold in the
| US, too, although the damages assessment would not have
| been as straightforward.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I'm not second-guessing this particular case; today's the
| first I've heard of it.
|
| I'm just noting that the American concept of libel and
| the British concept of libel are wildly different in
| practice.
| tptacek wrote:
| Except that the "Opinion" defense in this judgement is
| fussier than US law (in US law, opinion is flat-out
| protected, honest or otherwise, so long as it doesn't
| directly claim to be based on undisclosed false facts),
| this reads pretty similar to a US libel case. I get that
| the two countries have very different legal doctrines on
| defamation, but they don't seem to be on display here.
|
| Also: a US judge would have been _a lot less nice_ to the
| defendants.
| benjojo12 wrote:
| 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
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| 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 PS70k plus court fees.
| nairboon wrote:
| What's the difference between your examples? Both
| sentences could be an opinion or a fact.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| "This guys is an asshole" is pretty clearly a subjective
| opinion I hold about a person, one that others might
| disagree with.
|
| "That diver is a pedophile" is pretty clearly a factual
| statement, implying that the person abuses kids, or has
| been convicted of such. (I know that, uh, the original
| statement was basically just an insult, but: it does
| posit a fact.)
| Aurornis wrote:
| > Both sentences could be an opinion or a fact.
|
| The judgments in these cases take all of the context into
| consideration.
|
| In general, though, accusing someone of pedophilia is
| substantially more serious than calling them an asshole.
| The former has objective meaning and can be associated
| with crimes against minor victims. The latter just means
| you don't like someone.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| No, while abstractly "X is an asshole" can be a statement
| of literal fact, in the concrete case where X is a person
| capable of bringing a defamation suit, it is not
| realistically possible that "X is an asshole" can be
| interpreted by a reasonable member of the audience
| (listener, reader, etc., depending on media) as such a
| statement; it clearly is a subjective statement of
| opinion of character.
|
| Meanwhile, a pedophile is something that a person capable
| of bringing a defamation suit could also literally be,
| and where a reasonable member of the audience for a
| description of them as such might (given the right other
| circumstances) view the description as a literal fact
| claim.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Everything anyone says is an "opinion" according to some
| definitions of "opinion." The distinction here is whether
| something is a claim of fact or simply a claim. A claim
| of fact is something that can be verified through some
| sort of objective measurement or detection.
|
| "Some pigs fly," "Bill Johnson signed over his rights to
| the song," and "This fish is 3 pounds, 4 ounces" are
| claims of fact.
|
| "Some pigs are beautiful," "Bill Johnson writes too many
| songs," and "People who catch fish are probably the same
| type of people who support terrorists" are just claims.
| benjojo12 wrote:
| Sure but to my knowledge you can call someone an asshole
| in the UK without being at risk of libel but calling
| someone a [pedophile/drug addict/similar] is (and IMO
| should) come with consequences if unsubstantiated
| ants_everywhere wrote:
| where do we land on motherf!cker?
|
| Taken literally it's accusing someone of a specific
| depraved act, but it's also clearly a term of abuse. My
| guess (not a lawyer!) is that once a term becomes more
| associated with abuse the more you're protected.
|
| Hustler basically called Jerry Falwell a motherf!cker but
| attributed to him a specific act, which they highlighted
| was satire and not to be taken seriously. Hustler lost in
| a jury trial and also on an appeal to the 4th circuit.
| The Supreme Court eventually ruled in Hustler's favor
| [0]. This is dramatized in the movie The People vs Larry
| Flint.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hustler_Magazine_v._Falwell
|
| [1] https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-people-vs-larry-
| flynt/
| tom_ wrote:
| You can say "motherfucker" if you need to.
| ants_everywhere wrote:
| Haha, I know, thanks :). I don't mind saying it... it's
| just such a raw word and I wanted people to focus on the
| substance without aggressively escalating the potty mouth
| in the thread.
| cml123 wrote:
| it's interesting how differently people perceive it.
| Motherfucker is something I'd have called a parent in a
| card game if they bested me, or an exclamation said aloud
| from dropping a wallet while walking. Very little
| significance to it.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| I'm assuming the context would matter, and how believable
| an average person would find "motherfucker" to imply
| literal incest.
| bawolff wrote:
| > where do we land on motherf!cker?
|
| > Taken literally it's accusing someone of a specific
| depraved act, but it's also clearly a term of abuse. My
| guess (not a lawyer!) is that once a term becomes more
| associated with abuse the more you're protected.
|
| Computer people have this weird notion that courts are
| like a computer program. If x == "foo" then punishment.
|
| That's not how it works. The use of any specific word
| does not determine in and of itself if something is an
| assertion of fact or an assertion of opinion. It depends
| on how you're using the word.
| ants_everywhere wrote:
| > The use of any specific word does not determine in and
| of itself if something is an assertion of fact or an
| assertion of opinion. It depends on how you're using the
| word.
|
| Yes that's the point I'm making. The entire thread is
| about which words you can get sued over libel for, which
| isn't how it works.
|
| > Computer people have this weird notion that courts are
| like a computer program. If x == "foo" then punishment.
|
| This seems unnecessarily insulting, especially since your
| comment is just a repeat of mine with the relevant
| details removed.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| The judge takes all of that into account when determining
| damages. The fee is based on an earlier lawsuit, with
| inflation added:
|
| > Mr Hamer asks for a single global sum to vindicate Dr
| Garrett's reputation and compensate him for distress in
| relation to all the publications complained of. He
| proposed a range of comparator decisions for my
| consideration, in support of a submission that libel
| damages approaching PS100,000 would be appropriate. I
| have considered these. I noted in particular the case of
| Fentiman v Marsh [2019] EWHC 2099 in which an award of
| PS55,000 was made in respect of allegations in a blog
| read by about 500 people that the claimant, a company
| CEO, was a hacker responsible for illegal cyber-attacks
| on a company. The tone of the allegations there were
| something comparable to those in the present case -
| somewhat personally and floridly put. I hold the effects
| of inflation in mind.
|
| > 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, is
| PS70,000.
|
| The fact techrights is a somewhat popular and respected
| publication on free software (at least by some circles)
| probably cost them.
|
| This isn't just about someone calling someone else an
| asshole, this is about a long and continuous series of
| accusations and (now legally confirmed) libel, neatly
| documented and organised on a dedicated hate page:
| https://techrights.org/wiki/Matthew_J_Garrett/ Looking at
| the dates on those links, they were especially active
| during August of 2023, accusing him of everything from
| misogyny and racism to committing hate crimes.
| B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
| > a dedicated hate page
|
| Sheesh. It even has empty slots for thought crimes not
| yet found ...
| rwmj wrote:
| It's incredible that they have left the claims there on
| the website. It's just asking for more trouble & damages.
| jkaplowitz wrote:
| The statements motivating this lawsuit included a lot
| more than just calling him an asshole. They called him a
| habitual cocaine user and accused him of orchestrating a
| harassment campaign. Those are claims of fact, and false
| accusations of that kind widely read in the victim's
| professional and academic communities could certainly
| cause more than PS70k plus court fees in eventual damages
| through reduced lifetime earnings.
|
| Disclaimer: Being a (currently quite inactive) member of
| the Debian project myself, I've met Matthew Garrett in
| the past on a relatively small number of occasions, but I
| have no inside information on the allegations mentioned
| in this court judgment and have not discussed them with
| him or with anyone else involved. I do, however, believe
| his side of the story based on what context I have about
| him.
| mindslight wrote:
| The problem is that viewing this as justice relies on an
| assumption that the legal system fully resolves, as if
| everyone who is wronged can be made whole. For example in
| this case - there is some third unknown party carrying out
| the harassment, against which Techrights would have a much
| higher bar to bring their own suit and recover their own
| damages (assuming discovery even went anywhere, and the
| person wasn't judgement proof). So Techrights is basically
| left "holding the bag" at the discontinuity between
| anonymous anarchistic free speech and trying to bring it
| into the realm of trustable statements by known identities
| and institutions.
|
| Merely adjudicating truthfulness with injunctive relief
| might be understandable in this day and age of persistent
| shameless lying. But the hefty monetary damages for what
| seems to be good faith (though seemingly entirely
| unsupported and possibly even delusional [0]) speech is a
| tough pill to swallow.
|
| [0] I took a quick scan through Techrights's wiki page
| "documenting" all this and the only thing substantiating
| the connection I could find was Garrett and the IRC
| harasser ping-timing-out at the same time. But there are
| _many_ different ways that could happen. Yet every
| screenshot is captioned as if it was definitely Garrett
| saying those things.
| bawolff wrote:
| > The problem is that viewing this as justice relies on
| an assumption that the legal system fully resolves, as if
| everyone who is wronged can be made whole.
|
| Are you suggesting being the victim of a crime should
| give you the right to hurt other people? Unrelated people
| at that?
|
| Two wrongs do not make a right. I think it is entirely
| just to punish wrongdoers even if some other unknown
| party has also wronged the wrong doer at some point in
| the past.
|
| > But the hefty monetary damages for what seems to be
| good faith (though seemingly entirely unsupported and
| possibly even delusional [0])
|
| How could entirely unsupported speech ever be in good
| faith?
| mindslight wrote:
| First, I never said anyone has the right to hurt other
| people. In fact I explicitly said I understood the
| injunctive relief. As for making the libeled whole,
| surely if the reach of a well-known blog is sufficient to
| cause significant damage to someone's reputation, then
| removing the posts and issuing a longstanding correction
| on the same blog should come close to repairing it [0].
|
| Second, the two wrongs are directly related in that one
| caused the other, as a result of the victim trying to
| figure out who was responsible and/or delusionally
| focusing on the wrong person because of the harassment.
| The point is that the _more_ above-board instance of
| speech is being legally punished (talking in terms of
| names and real-world identities), whereas the _less_
| above board speech is not (because doing so is up against
| the limit of anonymous communications).
|
| > _How could entirely unsupported speech ever be in good
| faith?_
|
| In this case, it seems due to some kind of delusional
| thinking that is seeing a connection where one does not
| exist, or at least cannot be substantiated. But
| regardless, Techrights seems to earnestly believe Garrett
| is behind the harassment, as opposed to say knowingly
| making false statements to damage his reputation.
|
| [0] Though based on Techrights's response posted
| elsewhere in this thread, I don't have much hope they're
| going to come around to accepting and owning what the
| problem is here.
| mattbee wrote:
| Yep if you ask Google what Matthew Garrett's reputation is,
| its AI description includes the (libellous!) accusation of
| "professional troll". Incredibly, the original articles are
| still up.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Hard to tell if you are arguing whether 70k is ridiculously
| large or ridiculously small.
| theoldgreybeard wrote:
| 700,000 would have been better.
| bigfatkitten wrote:
| Hardly matters if the unsuccessful party has no way of
| paying.
| bawolff wrote:
| After reading the judgement, its honestly kind of low.
|
| They basically refused to submit any evidence at all in their
| defense, and then were racist to the opposing side's lawyer.
| rmoriz wrote:
| IRC is back.
|
| >This is a dispute between prominent 'free software movement'
| activists. The free software movement advances a philosophy and
| practice which values the freedom of users to create and share
| software enabling internet access, and challenges the dominance
| of 'big tech' software and systems over the online experience.
| That includes a preference for internet relay chat ('IRC'), an
| online instant messaging system dating in origin from the 1990s,
| over the big social media platforms. The challenge the free
| software movement makes is not only of a technical, but also of a
| social, economic or ethical nature, and it espouses some wider
| sets of values accordingly
| raphlinus wrote:
| Matthew's side of the story is here:
| https://mastodon.online/@mjg59@nondeterministic.computer/115...
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Direct link:
| https://nondeterministic.computer/@mjg59/115581959497817474
| hamdingers wrote:
| Here's the other side, for what it's worth:
| https://news.tuxmachines.org/n/2025/11/20/Today_s_Judgement....
| tptacek wrote:
| A grim portent for their mental health, given the attempt to
| reframe a judgement that demolished them and called them
| "character assassins" as supportive.
|
| Really, though, this is the first time I've ever looked at
| TechRights for real, and the whole place is very... Always
| Sunny meme.
| rideontime wrote:
| Imagine me wearing my context hat and context shirt, pointing to
| my sign that reads "I require context."
| TRiG_Ireland wrote:
| The first four paragraphs of the judgment lay out most of it.
| Matthew Garrett's summary at
| https://nondeterministic.computer/@mjg59/115581959497817474 is
| as follows:
|
| > In and around 2023, Roy and Rianne Schestowitz were subject
| to a horrific campaign of online harassment. Unfortunately they
| blamed me for it, and in turn wrote and published an
| astonishing array of articles making false accusations against
| me. Last year, I sued them in the high court in London. In
| turn, they countersued me for harassment. The case was heard
| last month and I'm pleased to say that the counterclaim was
| dismissed and I prevailed in my case. The court awarded me
| PS70,000 in damages.
|
| I've never heard of any of these people before, so for now I'm
| taking that as true at face value, given that he won.
| postexitus wrote:
| What was the harassment TR/TM was receiving and what was the
| libel they directed at MG? (juicier gossip please)
| mmaunder wrote:
| Yes yes. If we're going to keep this on the front page, we need
| more juice from the squeeze.
| fancyfredbot wrote:
| Dr Garrett is chiefly accused of an online campaign of material
| which is (variously) criminal, illegal or offensive. The
| criminal matters alleged include cybercrime, hate crime,
| blackmail, issuing threats of violence or death, and matters
| adjacent to terrorism. Other illegal matters alleged include
| defamation, harassment and online abuse. Offensive matters
| alleged include material that is variously racist, antisemitic,
| misogynist, homophobic or otherwise hateful or discriminatory,
| sexually incontinent, or drugs-related. Dr Garrett is alleged
| to have waged this campaign through the medium of IRC
| 'sockpuppet' accounts - accounts under pseudonymous user
| nicknames intended to be a vehicle for distributing material
| anonymously and deniably.
|
| You can see the harassment they were recieving here. There was
| some pretty vile stuff directed at Rianne in particular.
|
| https://news.tuxmachines.org/n/2023/08/11/Garrett_Committing...
| postexitus wrote:
| This is a wild read. Reminds me of blogs written by the
| Temple OS guy. I wonder how they decided that this is coming
| from MG - there must be a backstory.
| tptacek wrote:
| Must there be? Have you seen the _rest_ of the site?
| postexitus wrote:
| looking at the rest of the site - not so sure. They seem
| to be having the same type of attacks directed towards
| many people.
|
| http://techrights.org/o/2021/04/21/libel-campaigns/
|
| Weirdly enough, mjg59_ was part of those?
|
| https://techrights.org/irc-archives/irc-log-
| techrights-19092...
|
| Another internet rabbit hole.
| tptacek wrote:
| Yeah I was going to write "I feel kind of bad for these
| people because it feels like there may be some untreated
| mental illness involved" but then I thought if I wrote
| that it was going to wind up on its own page clipped as
| "I feel kind of bad for these people" followed by a blurb
| saying "See? We told you Matthew Garrett eats cats."
| NohatCoder wrote:
| TL;DR:
|
| Defendants Roy and Rianne Schestowitz were the targets of online
| harassment. They decided that claimant Matthew Garrett was behind
| it, and initiated their own hate campaign against him, in
| particular using their websites www.techrights.org and
| news.tuxmachines.org to do so.
|
| The defendants did a very poor job of going to court, even by the
| standards of amateurs representing themselves, producing almost
| no evidence, none of which the judge found to be relevant.
|
| Damages of PS70K were awarded.
| stebalien wrote:
| For anyone interested, the story is told in the "truth defense"
| section:
|
| https://caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ewhc/kb/2025/3063#lv...
| bawolff wrote:
| That was a wild ride.
|
| > Mr Hamer referred to what he considered to be racist attacks on
| Dr Garrett's lawyers, posted on Techrights, which he described as
| probably the worst example he had seen of such conduct.
|
| So these people's response to getting sued was to make racist
| comments about the person suing them's lawyer?!
|
| Keeping it classy.
| fancyfredbot wrote:
| I had never heard of techrights before. It seems to have a lot of
| angry/nasty articles. There's a huge amount of paranoia and
| hatred towards big tech. A lot of personal attacks against
| individuals and his former employer. I find myself questioning
| whether the authors are entirely sane.
|
| Can anyone confirm whether it is (or was?) really a
| respectable/serious free software site?
| parl_match wrote:
| complicated. sometimes, they do real and solid reporting.
|
| on the other hand, there's a reason multiple tech-focused
| communities ban their articles
|
| i personally am happy to see this judgement, their attacks on
| mjg are unhinged and misguided
| fancyfredbot wrote:
| Example of real solid reporting?
| parl_match wrote:
| I don't think I will, thank you. Feel free to Google it.
| someone_eu wrote:
| It's a QAnon of FOSS.
| mjg59 wrote:
| The final order implementing the judgement isn't out yet so I'm
| not going to go into too much detail here as yet, but there's
| additional publicly available information I can share:
|
| The original claim: https://codon.org.uk/~mjg59/case/Claims.pdf
|
| The defence and counterclaim:
| https://codon.org.uk/~mjg59/case/Defence_Counterclaim.pdf
|
| The associated schedule of harassment:
| https://codon.org.uk/~mjg59/case/Schedule.pdf
|
| The reply to the defence and counterclaim:
| https://codon.org.uk/~mjg59/case/Reply.pdf
| nikanj wrote:
| Do lawsuits ever really end, or do the parties just run out of
| money? Isn't the SCO v. Linux thing still shambling on in some
| court?
| mjg59 wrote:
| Other than reaching agreement over the order to implement the
| judgement, this is likely over - my understanding is that an
| appeal could only occur if the judge made an error of law,
| and they would need to convince another judge of this before
| being granted permission to appeal.
| rwmj wrote:
| What about the fact that - incredibly - the page defaming
| you is still up on their website? Surely the judge won't
| take kindly to that?
| mjg59 wrote:
| As of yet there isn't an order associated with the
| judgement - that's expected to be something negotiated
| between the parties. I'm unqualified to say what impact
| continuing to publish the material has on that process.
| mjg59 wrote:
| One thing that didn't end up happening - the claim that he
| would have multiple people, including Linus Torvalds, Richard
| Stallman, Bruce Perens, and John Gilmore testify against me.
| chris_wot wrote:
| I feel for Matthew. Apparently there is an entire chapter about
| me on an anti-Wikipedia website that advances some quite
| literally absurd claims. I've been aware of it for some time,
| being simultaneously amused and disturbed by the unhinged nature
| of both the material and the originator.
|
| If this is how I feel about a discredited and largely
| uninfluential website, one can only imagine how Matthew feels
| given how widely read the unhinged claims on tuxmachines were
| against him.
| kragen wrote:
| Paragraph 25 describes what this is all about:
|
| > _Dr Garrett is chiefly accused of an online campaign of
| material which is (variously) criminal, illegal or offensive. The
| criminal matters alleged include cybercrime, hate crime,
| blackmail, issuing threats of violence or death, and matters
| adjacent to terrorism. Other illegal matters alleged include
| defamation, harassment and online abuse. Offensive matters
| alleged include material that is variously racist, antisemitic,
| misogynist, homophobic or otherwise hateful or discriminatory,
| sexually incontinent, or drugs-related. Dr Garrett is alleged to
| have waged this campaign through the medium of IRC 'sockpuppet'
| accounts - accounts under pseudonymous user nicknames intended to
| be a vehicle for distributing material anonymously and deniably.
| Many posts from these accounts are reproduced in the articles
| complained of. Dr Garrett is also repeatedly alleged to be an
| uncontrolled user of illegal class A drugs, principally crack
| cocaine._
|
| The evidence for the allegations was apparently very thin
| (PP59-60):
|
| > _First, the defence relies on an incident a few years prior to
| the sockpuppet campaign, in which Dr Garrett admittedly
| registered himself online in two borrowed names for the purpose
| of making a rhetorical or satirical point about the owner of
| those names. Dr Garrett's evidence is that he did so openly, and
| with the knowledge of the owner (who had himself vacated the
| names in order to borrow another user's nickname - which was in
| part Dr Garrett's point in also doing so). Dr Schestowitz clearly
| takes exception to that particular piece of theatricality as a
| major breach of netiquette in its own right, and regards it as a
| sign or symptom of propensity for sockpuppetry. But the incident
| in question, on its face, is plainly something quite different
| from the covert use of sockpuppet accounts to publish illegal or
| offensive material, and is not in my judgment capable of
| indicating any sort of propensity to do that._
|
| > _Second, it is said there was an incident in which Dr Garrett's
| own named account and one of the sockpuppet accounts experienced
| simultaneous dropped connections. If established, that could
| indicate dual operation by a single individual. The evidence from
| the Claimant is that the dropped connections were not in fact
| simultaneous. I have no evidential basis for doing otherwise than
| proceeding on that basis. This pleading cannot in the
| circumstances support an inference of Dr Garrett's authorship of
| the sockpuppet posts._
|
| PP61-75 have further, even weaker evidence.
| bilekas wrote:
| > Dr Garrett is alleged to have waged this campaign through the
| medium of IRC 'sockpuppet' accounts
|
| And people say IRC is dead!
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| I don't know anything about the parties involved but I really
| enjoyed reading the document. A skilled person writing well and
| offering detailed descriptions of background and process is
| always attractive to me.
| mjg59 wrote:
| I was _extremely_ impressed with the attention that the judge
| paid to the entire exercise, and the manner in which she
| conducted the trial.
| rstat1 wrote:
| Its WILD to me seeing Techrights described as "well-established,
| respected and trusted"
| bigfatkitten wrote:
| I remember Roy Schestowitz from cross-posted flame wars coming
| out of comp.os.linux.advocacy at least 25 years ago.
|
| He was not a popular figure even back then, for reasons of his
| own making.
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