Author: Noel Carr

Rights groups react as court orders Irish man to pay €75,000 over defamatory post

Irish Times 18th June 2016 – Marie O’Halloran

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/facebook-award-is-a-wake-up-call-for-online-users-1.2689600

Facebook award is “a wake-up call for online users”.

Desmond Crofton, who won his civil action in relation to a Facebook comment.

An award of €75,000 in damages to a man following a defamatory Facebookposting has been described as a wake-up call for online users that they are not engaged in “pub talk”.

A Digital Rights Ireland spokesman said the award in Monaghan Circuit Court demonstrated the reality that the laws of defamation “definitely do apply to the internet”.

He was commenting following the case in which a Co Monaghan man was ordered to pay damages after he posted comments on Facebook about the national director of the National Association of Regional Game Councils.

Desmond Crofton (63), of Cedarwood House, Stonestown, Co Offaly took the civil action against John Gilsenan of Grigg, Doohamlet, Castleblayney, in relation to a Facebook comment posted on or about December 22nd, 2015.

Confrontation

Mr Crofton gave an outline of how the Facebook comment resulted in questions being raised by members about the organisation’s finances and legal costs and had resulted in a confrontation that led to him being suspended on full pay.

Gilsenan failed to appear in court and counsel said that although he engaged in some early communication with the plaintiff, he had since “abandoned” the matter.

In awarding the maximum allowable damages, Judge John O’Hagan told Monaghan Circuit Court on Thursday that his order should “teach people posting messages on the social media site to be very careful”.

A spokesman for Digital Rights Ireland said it was a “big ruling to get in the Circuit Court” and described it as a “wake-up call for a lot of people”.

Giving out

He said internet users often think they are talking in the pub and they might be giving out about someone.

“Often they are talking off the top of their heads and they don’t have any facts,” the spokesman said. “To them it’s like pub talk and it goes away at the end of the night.”

However, he said they had turned into publishers, subject to the same defamation laws as newspapers as they “committed something to writing” and they are speaking to a large audience of people, lots of whom they do not know.

“There’s a feeling that the old laws [offline] don’t apply online, but they do”, he said, adding that many people were not aware of the defamation laws.

“Irish defamation laws are pretty strict. There’s a very low bar for what defamation is in our system.”

He said the real world of defamation law applied to the virtual world as well.

Well over €30m was paid to commercial salmon fishermen not to fish from 2007 onwards. Yet, many took the money and continued using so called decommissioned nets which is part of the reason salmon and sea trout numbers are still declining. These breaches of the act are not small hit and run operations. Many nets shot are so long and left out so long that they are dangerous to other boat users. Yet nothing is done about it. Occasionally, something gives and an odd one is charged and sometimes it comes up in court like this one in Kerry. Not Donegal or mayo or Galway.

Below is the text from the Dingle Peninsula Fishing page

So a fisherman gets €150,000 to stop netting for salmon, he then goes and gets charged for netting salmon with a net of 750 yards long off sauce Creek at Brandon Point, while being paid compensation of €150,000 to not do it, he then turns up in court with 1 thousand euro! Like does anybody else think that not only are they completely taking the piss out of the government but are also destroying the whole area of fish life..

Salmon caught in these nets would be making there way up all the small spate rivers all the Dingle Peninsula, they would be spawning in the lochs and streams way up in the valleys and mountains. After travelling thousands of miles down the North Atlantic onto the west coast of Ireland, instead they getting caught in these greedy so called fisherman’s nets and being sold to all the restaurants in the area….

Tourists will then flock to the area and eat seafood chowder and salmon dinners not knowing the untold damage they are doing to the local rivers…

The sickening fact is that we the public are paying these guys compensation to not net while to head out every morning and evening from Brandon pier.. You can see them yourself every day with the fiberglass boats and outboard engines. Another thing that sickens me is the so called environmentalists will pull up with there boats all summer long and see these nets and not say a word…

It will be interesting to see what will be done to thus so called fisherman come later in the year…

Tight lines..

#poaching #salmon #dinglepeninsulafishingandhunting #poachinginkerry #cloghane #brandonp

From: Noel Carr Secretary FISSTA