Libel is extremely hard to prove.
A threat of a lible suit is pointless unless one follows through with it. Rather than threaten, one is better off not tipping their hand and proceeding with the suit. To be awarded damages, you'd have to show how you've been damaged and translate that into dollar value.
It could take several years and a ton of money to proceed with a libel suit, even if you win, you still have to collect. This is made even more difficult by international borders, travel, time,etc...
Smells like bullshit to me.
Incidentally, Leonard Cohen is nearly 70, and one of the songs from his new album could be read as a version of the above soundbite:
THE LETTERS
You never liked to get
The letters that I sent.
But now you’ve got the gist
Of what my letters meant.
You’re reading them again,
The ones you didn’t burn.
You press them to your lips,
My pages of concern.
I said there’d been a flood.
I said there’s nothing left.
I hoped that you would come.
I gave you my address.
Your story was so long,
The plot was so intense,
It took you years to cross
The lines of self-defense.
The wounded forms appear:
The loss, the full extent;
And simple kindness here,
The solitude of strength.
You walk into my room.
You stand there at my desk,
Begin your letter to
The one who’s coming next.
Of course, you could read it as someone old trying to pass on wisdom to a member of the younger generation - and them ignoring it, burning the letters. But then the younger person grows up and finds himself in exactly the same position.
But Cohen previously wrote, "And I raise my glass to the awful truth that you can't reveal to the ears of youth, except to say it isn't worth a dime."
And 'Hallelujah' is, according to him, about realising, post-middle age, that you actually haven't learned everything. It's throwing up your hands and saying, "I don't understand a damn thing! Hallelujah!"
Which is more honesty than you can reasonably expect from most older men who, (it seems to me at least,) get to a point where they think, "Oh, for God's sake, I must have learned something by now - let's just say that everything I think here and now is a fact."
Don't snap at me - I expect I'll get to that stage too. And yes, it happens to young men as well.
But the point is, I don't think 'The Letters' is specifically about age. I think it's just about how difficult it is to communicate the full extent of our experiences to people until they've gone through the same thing. Perhaps also brought about by the fact that Cohen has been totally miscast as a miserabalist for the past half a century, and is only lately being reconsidered as something of a prophet.
Yawning does not always denote contempt Hen my lovely, mostly it displays an individuals level of wakefulness. Or weariness, if you like.
yawn - an involuntary intake of breath through a wide open mouth; usually triggered by fatigue or boredom.
Well, Jay, I was using what you said as a springboard to my own thoughts, not disagreeing with you. So there was really no need to go about injuring yourself like that. Chill out.
'Libel is extremely hard to prove.
A threat of a lible suit is pointless unless one follows through with it. Rather than threaten, one is better off not tipping their hand and proceeding with the suit. To be awarded damages, you'd have to show how you've been damaged and translate that into dollar value.'
In America, yes, because of freedom of speech laws. In England, it's much easier. Hence libel cases have often been brought against books in England but not against the same book in America because of the relative difficulty of winning a case. I don't think the current situation would fall under libel laws (unless the touted correspondence was false) but clearly Andrea's bluff was enough to scare its potential propogator off.
Yeah, in my view it's far too easy to win libel cases in Britain.
In many cases newspapers print stories which are, to all intents and purposes factually accurate but still get done for libel.
Former Liverpool goalkeeper, Bruce Grobbelaar, for example, won a libel suit against The Sun because, though they proved that he'd performed badly in football matches and that he'd taken money from dodgy bookmakers from the the Far East, it was impossible to prove that the latter caused the former.
He only got a nominal £1 in damages, though.
That said, actually getting a libel case to court is extremely difficult unless you have the cash to pay huge legal fees.
Therefore the laws tend to protect the rich and famous quite well and ordinary people and the wider public interest very badly. I don't say this very often but, in this case, I think the American laws are broadly better.
In the particular case here, I'm slightly confused as to what the connection between the current discussion and libel is. Libel law is concerned with defamation not privacy or confidentiality.
Unless the info re: UKA authors features either court reports or information covered by the Official Secrets Act (has Andrea joined MI5?) then it's highly unlikely to be legally private or confidential.
That said, information in these 'private' messages could well be defamatory so if UKA and the Boho Press have a large legal budget the poster could be in trouble and ABC would be likely to remove such material immediately.
I'm not sure what this is all about either... Don't really care, but it does make for interesting general discussion...
So, libel vs copyright violation. Could this be a copyright issue? If you post the contents of a private e-mail without the authors permission that is? Is private e-mail copyright protected?
Also, posting the contents of another forum from a different web site, now I see that as a possible copyright issue. Somebody goes over to UKA, captures the forum and posts the contents here in the forums. If I were running ABC, I would delete the posting from another website to protect themselves from copyright issues. Any writer or user that posts something in the forums like that should know better in my opinion.
Rokkinite: Hiya am curious as to your position on this thread. I ask because you appear to state one thing yet aver that I have been scared off!
No I haven't been scared off. Far from it. I have no money so therefore I have nothing to be sued for.
However I will say that as a long standing member of this 'fair and honest' site, I will not embroil it into libel suits etc (albeit fictitious threats) from user (s) from another.
Yes I have many questions that I would like answered (publicly). Yes I have factual evidence to support my questions. But no I will not embroil this site in publishing the facts here.
I concluded my argument last night by iterating that as the threat was more against this site, should it allow publication of any factual evidence I would leave it alone. This was not achieved by Andrea, Richard nor the threat of a legal action.
I will conclude with one final statement: (I apologise now for any copyright enfringement I make with this sentence).
"The lady hath protesteth too much!"
I don't know for sure, Missi. Different articles I read seem to say different things. Some people, certainly, have always held him in high esteem. But in his interviews he gives the impression that he feels misjudged a lot. And sometimes when I mention I like him to people they say, "Oh, aye! Good for slitting the old wrists to, eh?"
One thing from Hens thread did really strike a cord mainly because I'm old
but have been quoting it for a very long time now this is it.
One is only qualified to speak or write on a subject truthfully if one has
been through "the same"experience themselves, "not similar but the
same".
My exact words usually are "I'm sorry but unless you have been through
that exact same experience yourself you will never be qualified to talk on
it because no one can even remotely begin to have all the feelings and
everything else that went with it unless they have been through it to".
Talk round it, discuss it even but "feel!! it never!!"
Something else has just come to mind thats why the old can talk about
the young as they have been there already but the young can't talk about
the old perceptively because they haven't got there yet which brings to
mind another saying I have about age Quote "oh come on now how can
you possiablely say that you haven't even got there yet"...
Well, as Kurt Vonnegut says, "All of us only just got here."
I don't think it's fair to disallow people from talking about something they haven't been through. But, obviously, they won't have the same perspective on it. Let's be clear here - people who've experienced something know what it *feels* like. That doesn't necessarily mean they know better how to deal with the problem. In fact, it's likely to give them a less-than-objective perspective.
Israelis whose families have been killed by Palestinians, and vice versa, for example. No one can fully understand their grief unless they've been through it, but the views of these victims on how to stop the same thing happening again are likely to be forever skewed. That's why I don't accept that age and experience automatically lead to wisdom.
In fact, on the back of my Pocko 'I am Me' book, it says "Innocence is wisdom!" which seals the deal for me.
Agree with Hen - it is a fallacious argument to say that only someone who has experienced something has anything of value to say about it. I would listen carefully to the views of someone who had personal experience of the situation under discussion, but would accept as well that their views may be coloured by emotion.
For example, I know that I do not have a rational, liberal view on burglary, having been burgled twice (once when I got back to my house on Boxing Day and lost everything, thus marring Christmas for me indefinitely). My view on burglary is that the victim ought to be allowed to drive an iron spike through the throat of the offender if they so wish. Now, I've experienced burglary, but I'm smart enough to realise that this doesn't make my view more RIGHT than someone who hasn't and recommends either a custodial sentence or work aimed at getting the offender off drugs.
Experience gives us useful, valuable and different insights into a problem, but it doesn't mean that our solutions are right. Nearly all families of murder victims would support hanging, and who could blame them, but it doesn't take into account that hanging is barbaric and the dreadful irreversible tragedy of executing the wrong person.
What I don't understand is the purpose of Katrina's pseudonymn, when we all know who she is. It's not even simpler to type...
On the back of my book, it says wisdom may only be obtained through experiences and experience may only be ganged over time.
We obversely read different books!
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