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Comment by ceejayoz | Hacker News Reader

For what? Someone's negative opinion of them?

For libel and slander, calling him stupid when he passed the exams set by the very examiner himself. Loss of earnings, etc.

Also against the universities for breach of the blacklisting prohibitions in the employment act. Their lack of checks and balances against this informal blacklist has left them wide open to be sued.

That just gets you into a Catch-22... being seen suing previous employers and supervisors will make it even harder to get hired in that field, and possibly any other as well.

If the person in question is not really unpleasant (and I don't know that they are not, but let's take it as given for a moment), my suggestion would be doing some strong networking. If you interact with people at conferences and are clearly not a bad person, then it's easier to defend yourself against the accusations by pointing out their variance with actual experience. In a perfect world, yeah, that work should not be necessary, but nobody's accused the world of being perfect in a long time.

(Ironically, if you pull this off and manage to build a new reputation on your own, then you might actually be able to safely sue.)

To an extent, but the private sector in the UK learnt a long time ago to simply refuse to give a reference instead of detailing their actual (disprovable) bad opinion.

We're only hearing one side, but given his professional accomplishment of people using his textbook in Masters courses, this comes across as a personal vendetta. You don't say those sort of things about someone who clearly does have talent unless you want to cause harm.

> being seen suing previous employers and supervisors will make it even harder to get hired in that field, and possibly any other as well.

If you win enough in damages then you don't need to worry too much about earning in the future.

No idea how likely that is, particularly after paying attorneys' fees.

You seem to be assuming that money is the only goal, rather than, say, contributing in academia.

There's a wide gap between a blacklisting system and someone getting a bad recommendation from an advisor.

I've met plenty of stupid people who can pass exams.

Exams are the formal yardstick here, and a serious institution should not subject itself to such a powerful and informal system that is completely unchallengeable and opaque as "your supervisor's secret opinion of you".

If "stupid people" are passing these exams, maybe these are not good exams either.

Finally, thinking in terms of "stupid people" also incorrectly frames intelligence as a scalar, is unhelpful and lacks descriptive power of how one's mental capacity falls short: Are they socially clueless? Are they forgetful? Are they not able to put in the mental work when it comes to answering questions?

But intervening on a test result makes you look suspicious and opens you to narrative about motivation.

The author mentions their Aspergers; which means the content of those emails, such as comments like 'stupid,' could be seen as coded discrimination. In nearly all of Europe, intellectual disabilities are a topic of non-discrimination legislation.

Ignoring the legal arm-chairing; universities and colleges retaining staff who discriminate students based on intellectual disabilities could face down some bad PR.

I wouldn't go down that road ... You can fit a definition of "stupid" and have Asperger without the former being caused by the latter.

Is saying your black coworker under-performs a form a racism ? Your female coworker being stupid would be sexism (but only if you're a man of course) ?

At the risk of missing the big picture, I think comments on their intelligence correlates to discrimination due to intellectual disabilities in a way race and gender would not.

In France (Law n°2018-493 of June 20, 2018 ) you are not permitted to make any race/illness/political/jugdment statement inside any database system (paper or eletronic) be it public or private

I wouldn't think an email would be considered to be inside a "database system."

Not to us, but its info stored in a structured way so... maybe legally.

I would hope not. How can one's demand for information supersede another persons right to privacy in their communications?

So will this come down to any email which passes through an officially recognized organization, be it government or corporation or educational, as open to inspection and possible litigation? Talk about an Orwellian nightmare

You have it backwards. If the government/public corporations keep everything secret, that's the Orwellian nightmare.

The person you are suggesting has the right to privacy is acting in an official capacity, paid for by public money. These are not personal emails.

Just that fact that one person is bringing a litigation, is not a valid reason to mark everything top secret.

If you make everything in the machinations of government secret, then these things (and much worse) will still happen, but there will be no transparency or recourse. That is the worst possible outcome.

Well, TFA opens with "Blacklisting at work has been illegal in the UK since 2010", but I guess it'd be hard to argue that what's described is bona fide blacklisting.

The UK has famously strict libel laws, and notably the burden of proof is on the defendant to prove the truth of their defamatory speech.

https://www.burnetts.co.uk/publications/blogs/libel-and-slan...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_defamation_law

I think there needs to be an act of publication for defamation law to be engaged though. It might be rather hard to argue that private emails reach that bar.

I'd note that the relevant definition of publish isn't the common-sense use (i.e. make available publicly), but merely "the communication of the defamatory matter to a third person" [0]. Indeed the first link in my prior post specifically calls out defamation via private methods of communication (texting) as something that may be actionable.

[0] http://www.hse.gov.uk/enforce/enforcementguide/court/reporti...

It seems like the reform act of 2013 might make these comments in-bounds:

Honest opinion: It is a defence for defamation, to show the statement complained of was a statement of opinion; that it indicated, in general or specific terms, the basis of the opinion; that an honest person could have held the opinion on any fact which existed when the statement was published, including any fact in a privileged statement that was pre-published. The defence is defeated if the claimant shows the defendant did not hold the opinion.

Before 2013 in the UK, not even truth was enough of a defense. Truths that caused harm (even justifiable harm) were still actionable.

In Austria it's still illegal to make true comments that offend religion sensibilities.

> Before 2013 in the UK, not even truth was enough of a defense.

Wasn't justification a different name for a truth defence?

The author of the article would have to be able to show that the comments caused serious harm, that they were published, and that they were defamatory.

The respondent would then have to prove, on the balance of probabilities, that the comments were either true, or fair comment, or privileged.

Defamation cases are very expensive to bring and a good outcome is not at all certain.

Literally the first words in the article:

Blacklisting at work has been illegal in the UK since 2010

But what is the bar for blacklisting? If I don't like a colleague and someone asks me for my opinion on them, is it blacklisting for me to honestly share my opinion?

Sure, but now you have to support the idea that the person in the article was blacklisted. Getting a bad recommendation and getting blacklisted are not the same thing.

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