Reinhardt Buys (legal opinion): safe to publish url that Patricia de Lille withheld
Posted on May 24th, 2007 by Richard Catto 5,578 views
An online legal expert, Reinhardt Buys, has echoed, in an article linked below, my original assessment of Patricia de Lille’s injunction against publishing the url of the blog she claims contains slanderous attacks against Simon Grindrod, Barry Ronge, and other South African notables.
De Lille threw up a legal smokescreen. She unanimously declared the offending blog to be slander and then used the threat of legal repercussions to intimidate people into thinking twice about publishing the url themselves.
De Lille erred when she attempted to bully the South African Blogosphere and the mainstream Media into keeping her "dirty little secret".
Buys also pointed out that slander is a civil matter, and therefore neither the police nor the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) will get involved investigating her claims.
So why did de Lille react this way?
The short answer is that she most likely does not have good advisers to tell her the best way to handle online slander effectively.
If she wanted to discover the person’s identity, she needed to hire a private investigation agency to handle this discreetly. At this point, though, the person has no doubt gone to ground and may never log into that blog again.
It seems that de Lille has learned from this self-inflicted debacle and has affirmed that she is firmly in the corner of Free Speech. She just doesn’t want to be slandered online by anonymous bloggers.
Fair enough. No-one does.
Source:
De Lille’s blogging bark without legal bite
Earlier today, de Lille backed off from her "regulate the bloggers" stance and stated that she has always been a champion of Free Speech
De Lille – ‘I am a living example of fighting for freedom of speech’
Linking to the SA Male Prostitute blog could land you in court
Filed under Barry Ronge, Blogosphere, blogs, Independent Democrats, Patricia de Lille, Politics, Simon Grindrod |
5 Responses to “Reinhardt Buys (legal opinion): safe to publish url that Patricia de Lille withheld”
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Richard Catto Says:
May 24th, 2007 at 14:55I don’t think de Lille is going to pursue the idea of regulating South African bloggers.
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The Great Pretenders: the Mainstream Media / Why the Blogosphere > “the Media” | Cape Town news Says:
May 25th, 2007 at 06:03[...] Because according to the legal advice they received, that would leave them vulnerable to charges of helping the sa male prostitute blogger to spread his defamation. Exactly the same line that de Lille trotted out in her original complaint. And exactly the same advice which was contradicted yesterday by some other online legal expert, Reinhardt Buys. [...]
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Belinda Says:
May 27th, 2007 at 14:12Ok we know Mr Buys is one of the Top Law experts in the country, but if you search you will see MXIT is a client of Mr Buys. Does that influance what he said? Now we know that people can view the law in different ways and its up to a judge to decide who is right. The Sunday Times today publish a legal oppinion from the biggest lawfirm dealing with sutch issues and they didnt agree with Mr Buys
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Richard Catto Says:
May 30th, 2007 at 07:07 -
Punklet88 Says:
June 5th, 2007 at 03:57LET’S JUST CALL IT STEVE….
I think it’s ironic that De Lille is against blogging – and indirectly also against freedom of speech. If it wasn’t for her speech in Parliament, the shaky Arms Deal would probably not have seen so much publicity.
I think it’s just scare tactics. And it’s most-likely based on fear of the possibilities … last month it was a male prostitute publishing his high-profile client list …. next month it’s the new SA Che Guevera planning a revolution … you get the picture.
We don’t see newspapers being shutdown for slander. So, it’s most-likely a fear of the unknown .. in this case the power of blogging.
It reminds me of a scene in Over The Hedge where the animals discover a hedge has appeared in their forest while they were hybernating. They are petrified of it and decide to call it Steve – just so they won’t be so afraid of it.
So, let’s just call it Steve.
PS: I think the reason Sunday Times doesnt agree with Buys is probably due to his links with Media24, which use to be(or still is) one of his clients.
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