Just check out :

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/bristol/4634479.stm

and it will hopefully explain why we take some of the moderating decisions that we do take.

Joe :)

god, i hope it wasn't one of my posts.... oops (https://www4.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/sheffield/topics/analysis/newswire/archive.html) the police do know i was joking..... right?:D

Don't worry about it Joe, it's only a minority of people who bitch and whine about the Mods here anyway...

And for the record I'm not just sucking up to the management here, I'm just saying that on the whole you and the other Mods do a good job of keeping crap off the forum.. They could do with guys like you lot at some of the other boards I post on, a lot of them are full of morons who can't spell and think it's funny to spam and start flame wars, mostly against me :mad:

all that effort, police time, court time, and money... our money... to get hold of an IP address of which is 99% unlikely to return any useable evidence! go police!

damn wonder if they will be after me next for posting HAHAHAHA to that thread about blunketts car being crashed, that got deleted.

*runs away*

*sells computer*

*moves abroad* ...........not telling which country tho ner ner ner nerrrrrrrr

Originally posted by xafier
all that effort, police time, court time, and money... our money... to get hold of an IP address of which is 99% unlikely to return any useable evidence! go police!
Which of course wouldn't have been an issue if they had given the police their logs when requested...

Originally posted by rich951
Which of course wouldn't have been an issue if they had given the police their logs when requested...

Good point. Indymedia have been busted before - I don't know about the rights and wrongs of this - just an interesting observation that it does happen!

:)

Now, that graffitti thread...... :suspect:

Also remember that it wasn't some trivial crime - I think I read somewhere it was about people throwing concrete blocks onto railway lines, causing £100k of damage...

Originally posted by rich951
Also remember that it wasn't some trivial crime - I think I read somewhere it was about people throwing concrete blocks onto railway lines, causing £100k of damage...

HUH?? thought it said graffiti ...................i know people say graffiti isnt art but thats taking the ****.............is that some modern art version of graffiti?

Peanuts compared to the cleanup required after Sheffield's 'Artists' ;)

It's likely to be the 'danger to human life' aspect in this case though :(

who rattled your cage and shouted peanuts? :)

Originally posted by rich951
Which of course wouldn't have been an issue if they had given the police their logs when requested...

what would have been the point in handing it over, it would have been useless to them most likely... also the fact we live in a country of supposed indipendance do we not?

it's like saying if I saw someone smash up somebodys car but I refused to tell the police they could come and raid my house, take me to the station and question and torture me till i confessed... we have the right to remain silent, and they took it... the police damn well know, or should know, that an IP address if it was even there wouldn't be enough to nail the person(s)

why didnt they spend that time and money going outside my house and stopping the idiots zooming up and down my road and paths in cars and dirt bikes? its not like we haven't complained enough...

had a group of little school kids from the local school walking down my road earlier on their way to the local pond where the swans and ducks are out in summer... one of these idiots speeding up the pavement then sees the kids and has to nearly swerve of his bike to avoid hitting and maybe killing 4 or 5 kids around 5 or 6 years old... then procedes to pull wheelies up the road...

Not "my" firefox cache, I'm pasting this from elsewhere :) It's hardly harmless graffiti though...


An anonymous author post this message, on 17th June:

with the G8 on the horizon, we looked for a simple yet effective way to stick two fingers up to this oil-addicted society.we found one! a train that carries brand-new cars from portbury dock nr avonmouth through the avon gorge to ashton and bedminster to desperse at temple meads for the rest of the country. Some questions that came into our little minds were:is portbury dock fianancially-competative? [yes], who paid for the tracks and maintance from portbury to parson St bedminster?. has anyone ever seen a passenger train on this route?,and sitting on a hot coach because you can't afford hiked-up train fayres, you see yet more new cars you can't afford to buy being transported by rail,to consume more oil, that our enviroment can't take. So we did an oxygen-grab as a kind of work-out up to the summit.Lifting and then dropping rocks onto useless pieces of metal.[17/06/05] We are feeling fit now for the greedy-ate, we suggest others should take aim and practice. The forth-coming event around gleneagles will not automatically mean a head-on confrontation with the old-bill, they have more spiteful weapons than us, so let us side step them and unbalance them using our minds. good luck stay free, S.P. ray.
(copy & paste from my Firefox cache.) This post was hidden within 24 hours, for violating Bristol Indymedia (BIM) policy. (I don't know exactly when it was hidden.)

An individual with a history of conflict and disagreement with BIM then contacted police about the post, since it hints that the poster threw rocks at trains, or the cargo on trains, or the train tracks ("dropping rocks onto useless pieces of metal.")

Police initally contacted BIM last monday, 20th June. BIM take legal advice.

Police request IP logs from a BIM member on 21th June.

Later on the 21st, BIM inform police via their solicitor that they will not voluntarily hand over and information. (NB: for non-Brits, a solicitor [wikipedia.org] is a type of lawyer.) BIM also inform Indymedia UK at this point, and contact Liberty [liberty-hu...hts.org.uk]

Yesterday, 27th June, police visit the home of the BIM member who hosted the server with a search warrant, and seize the BIM server and the individual's own computer, and arrest the BIM member.

Originally posted by xafier
what would have been the point in handing it over, it would have been useless to them most likely... also the fact we live in a country of supposed indipendance do we not?

it's like saying if I saw someone smash up somebodys car but I refused to tell the police they could come and raid my house, take me to the station and question and torture me till i confessed... we have the right to remain silent, and they took it... the police damn well know, or should know, that an IP address if it was even there wouldn't be enough to nail the person(s)

I'd agree with you that they may well have not been able to prove anything useful from the ip address (although the sort of person stupid enough to boast about this may well be stupid enough to be traced!), but I also kind of hope that you would say something if you knew who trashed my car! :) I also think you're being slightly melodramatic - you have the right to remain silent, but the police have the right to a search warrant if they suspect you of hiding evidence of a serious crime! And bringing torture into it is a tad extreme ;)

Originally posted by xafier
what would have been the point in handing it over, it would have been useless to them most likely... also the fact we live in a country of supposed indipendance do we not?

it's like saying if I saw someone smash up somebodys car but I refused to tell the police they could come and raid my house, take me to the station and question and torture me till i confessed... we have the right to remain silent, and they took it... the police damn well know, or should know, that an IP address if it was even there wouldn't be enough to nail the person(s)

why didnt they spend that time and money going outside my house and stopping the idiots zooming up and down my road and paths in cars and dirt bikes? its not like we haven't complained enough...

had a group of little school kids from the local school walking down my road earlier on their way to the local pond where the swans and ducks are out in summer... one of these idiots speeding up the pavement then sees the kids and has to nearly swerve of his bike to avoid hitting and maybe killing 4 or 5 kids around 5 or 6 years old... then procedes to pull wheelies up the road... Maybe if the police didn't have to waste their time getting court orders for information that someone was withholding on a 'matter of principal' they could sort out the problems outside your front door!:)

regarding the bit on ips being useless..........i suppose they could who is it to find out which isp it was for, go through said isps logs and find out the user for that time with that ip and then get said users address and details etc............go knock him up and drag him away in his pants for 20 years?

Originally posted by rich951
but I also kind of hope that you would say something if you knew who trashed my car! :) I also think you're being slightly melodramatic

maybe I'm being a little melodramatic ;) I just think it was yet another waste of money, if they catch the culprit then I'll eat humble pie so to speak... but i highly doubt it

Anyone have anything to declare .. posting wise? :suspect: :suspect: ;)

Just for the record books, i never mean a word I say, it's all made up, I swear it is, I swear it is.:o

Just for the record books, i never mean a word I say, it's all made up, I swear it is, I swear it is.:o
:suspect: you sure about that Poppins ;)

The forum wasn't getting sued though, was it? Some criminals appeared to have confessed on the forum and so the police wanted to trace them. This doesn't make the forum in any way liable does it?

I wish they would take the same attitude with certain right wing forums. They could trace all the BNP members and take them to court for racial harrassment etc.

I don't think it really draws much of a parallel with the potential for being sued for libel. And they did refuse to hand over the ip address of the poster (presumably which had been ordered by a court).

Jeez....a year old thread of mine is resurrected.

Not sure what the relevance is today! :)

Jeez....a year old thread of mine is resurrected.

Not sure what the relevance is today! :)

The relevance is Im being a bit cheeky! ;)

Good timely bump though, something relevant to this was in the news (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/04/21/moderator_liable_for_comments/) recently...

:o not only am I cheeky.. I have a 6th sense :suspect:

Don't worry about it Joe, it's only a minority of people who bitch and whine about the Mods here anyway...

And for the record I'm not just sucking up to the management here, I'm just saying that on the whole you and the other Mods do a good job of keeping crap off the forum.. They could do with guys like you lot at some of the other boards I post on, a lot of them are full of morons who can't spell and think it's funny to spam and start flame wars, mostly against me :mad:who would do that rich ?

Good timely bump though, something relevant to this was in the news (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/04/21/moderator_liable_for_comments/) recently...

Yup, aware of that one.

Which is why we often come down very hard on threads that might get us in to trouble.

Germany traditionally has tough online laws, however; until recently you had to have a licence from the Bundesport in order to have a modem, for example. Any users that post stuff that is likely to be 'legally questionable' will have the material removed; repeated postings will end up with the users being removed for a while.