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Comment by petercooper | Hacker News Reader

The real issue here is whether Digital Ocean should be enforcing a term in their ToS to prevent users from using their network in various socially negative ways. As a liberal-ish European, I think they should, but I appreciate this stance doesn't necessarily play well in the US.

Nonetheless, taking quotes from an informal chat room and turning them into a biased, borderline libelous blog post isn't cool. It's immaterial whether Collins told the author they didn't care about the post or not. If Collins made an official complaint as per the ToS, the post in question - http://vpsexperience.wordpress.com/2014/01/05/googler-speaks... - strikes me as defamatory and embarrassing enough to legitimately fall under term 2.8.. so the real question has nothing to do with the complaint but more is term 2.8 a good idea or not?

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Thats interesting. As a liberalish European, I think DigitalOcean shouldn't be allowed to police their content, just as ISPs shouldn't be allowed to block websites at their whim. Thats clearly in the realm of courts and lawyers. DigitalOcean can cancel the contract once others found the blog post to be defamatory.

Perhaps the two of you are only disagreeing on what "liberal" means; it tends to mean something quite different in Europe than in the US :)

Thats precisely the point ;).

They said they're both European

I guess both are liberal in the US sense of term but are not agreeing about if they have to mandatory delete the contents or to mandatory do the reverse. :)

Sure, but Europeans are quite capable of using a term differently if they believe that's what their audience expects; and most people on HN are probably still USA-ian ;-)

Looking in the dictionary, I see liberal as "willing to respect or accept behaviour or opinions different from one's own", which is what I (as a European) had always thought -- what does it mean in America?

It means "leftist" AFAIK

Politically left-wing.

Increasingly these days, it seems to be a term for anyone who doesn't give credence to the theory that global warming is a hoax made up by Satan so Barack Obama can marry his secret Kenyan gay lover.

"Shouldn't be allowed" is a bit strong. It is not unreasonable to remove questionable content when you are made aware of it; if only to protect the business from threat of legal action. It becomes policing when a website has to actively check up on its customers which places an unfair burden.

> DigitalOcean can cancel the contract once others found the blog post to be defamatory.

Well ... that's what's happening. It's not "policing content", it's holding up their side of the contract.

and their contract, it seems like, says that they can police content.

It's still policing content. As a customer I didn't expect that they would for anything short of illegal.

Their interests are not the same as yours. That particular clause allows them to require the removal of content that places them at legal risk.

"Policing" incorrectly applies that they are actively trawling the site and telling people what to write about. That is clearly not true.

I see this sort of non-argument on HN a lot. Why do you believe that just because someone has the right to do something, that changes its nature? I have the right in the US to walk down the street shouting racist slogans. If I did so, should I be immune from criticism because it's within my rights? Is one magically not-racist just because the law says racist behavior is legal?

No-one's saying you should be immune from criticism, surely? FWIW: yes, you should totally be able to say whatever you want, even if it's bigoted, flat-out wrong, outdated, whatever; as long as I'm free to say that it's dumb and bigoted, flat-out wrong, outdated, whatever ;)

I think you're perfectly within your rights to criticise Digital Ocean. And I am perfectly within my rights to argue about the nature of Digital Ocean's actions.

The others, to clarify, in that case being: a court.

Exactly. If the post is "socially negative," then that interaction is between the two people having the interaction. They have to work it out between themselves and let other people make up their own minds based on what they see. If the playground/commons/social theatre gets terminated every time two people disagree, then we'll never be able to work out anything worthwhile, justice will be harmed.

Harassment is pressure and intimidation. Travis Collins is a prevaricator for fabricating the story that the author was following him online and harassing him. DO doesn't have the resources, wisdom or dissociated self-interest to be able to properly police things and will botch themselves up seriously if they try. They should learn from history instead of retreating into Cover Your Ass mode.

Libel implies it's not true. If it is true then it is legal (as far as I am aware).

The original blog post strikes me as possibly slightly biased, but probably true, therefore not libellous.

Indeed; political campaigning 101 (at least here in the UK) is that libel must both:

    * contain false statements AND
    * be designed to damage reputation.

If only the latter, then it's not libel.

However, if it's the former as well, then both the author and the publisher/printer can be sued, so DO in this case are protecting their own legal status by removing libelous material.

Saying you don't like someone online, quoting them and making inferences, are all part of normal political debate and are not libelous.

Quoting somebody out of context, or changing the quote, and implying that they believe the direct opposite of what they actually said, would be untrue and therefore would be libelous. True quotes, backed up by screenshots, would not fall into this category, at least in the UK.

Exactly. If it was libellous, then DO do need to protect themselves. However I felt that blog post was genuine, on first impression of reading it, and I think there was enough evidence that it may actually be true that DO should not have been anywhere near as quick to take it down, perhaps they should have investigated it more.

That is, if the reason for taking it down was entirely to protect themselves legally. From what I've read, it's hinted that this might not be to protect themselves, but might be more down to them just wanting it gone.

In the U.S., there is the concept of "false light", which is similar to defamation, except that the plaintiff can claim damages even if the implication is true.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_light

A classic case (though for some reason, I haven't been able to find it through Googling), according to my law professor, involved Time LIFE Magazine (or perhaps one of its peers), which had a photograph of a cowboy, and the silhouette, perhaps it was the back of his saddle, appeared to imply that the man was exposing his member.

The photo was unaltered and thus, true, but the cowboy was able to claim damages. Again, I'm citing from memory but haven't been able to find the case via web searches (it's likely to have happened decades ago, though).

Since the U.S. is more permissive on the issue of libel than most countries, I imagine the concept of "false light", or something similar to it, exists in most countries.

It's best not to speculate on defamation matters, because defamation laws vary from place to place. Quite a lot, sometimes.

The original article reminds me of the usual SUN/Bild/Fox News style which makes it really hard to defend the author in any way. In addition to that he calls names, basically gives out the address of the person in question.. ugh.

Due to few (any?) countries truly considering ISPs as common carriers most ISPs have to be the police at some stage. So it's a matter of how they handle it. It doesn't sound like DO have handled this well.

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