John Breslin, who is heavily involved with Boards.ie, a popular Irish forum, posted a few days ago about MCD's legal threats against the company that owns the site.
He has followed up that post with another quoting another Boards' director Tom Murphy's announcement to Boards.ie users.
It seems that MCD's concert / festival Oxegen came under some criticism from users of the forum and that rather than engaging in dialogue with the forum maintainers Oxegen "went legal".
Over the years since Boards was setup I know they have received legal threats from a number of companies, but they're obviously getting more of them now than they were before.
Only a few weeks ago they got similar treatment from a UK hosting company
I didn't see the MCD threads, so I've no idea what people were saying, but surely consumers have a right to criticise suppliers?
Wouldn't it be better for all parties concerned if the suppliers were to respond to the criticism, rather than reacting to it?
A response could have led to a positive "spin", whereas this sort of reaction will leave nasty taste in many people's mouths.
I keep an eye on what people are saying about Blacknight in the "blogosphere" and while I'd love to see only positive comments I know that that will not always be the case (try a search on technorati or similar and you'll see what I mean).
I have to accept the criticism for what it is - criticism.
As long as nobody is making any personal attacks against me or my staff I am more than happy to read the comments and see if there is any way that the issue can be addressed for future clients. It may not always be possible, but I'd rather know when we were making mistakes than be ignorant of them.
That's one of the reasons why blogs and other forms of "self publication" can be very positive for companies. It gives them a place where they can interact more directly with their customers and clients.
Freedom of Speech vs Legal Threats - Boards.ie Threatened Again
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This page contains a single entry by Michele Neylon published on August 14, 2006 12:55 AM.
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I read about this in the Sunday Times and couldn't believe it. Way overboard and very bad publicity for MCD.
Unfortunately there's bad publicity surrounding every festival but it never stops people paying out extraordinary sums to sit in a muddy field and take a pee in a portaloo for a weekend.
I'd rather a nice hotel and a show in a nice theatre myself! :)
Donncha, go to Glastonbury and you might not be so sure.
I don't have a lot of time for Boards these days given Jerry's attitude and the decision by the rest of them to leave him off the leash, but MCD actually leads th way on the asshole front. Let's hope this time Tom tries doing rather than talking.
Like was said in the Sunday Times article - the MCD response is uncannily similier to the way the Chinese government reacts to negative comments about it.
I was at this years Oxegen festival, and for me it was easily one of the best weekends of my life. I found the whole thing in general superbly well-run... but it was not perfect for everyone. Some people did have bad experiences - there really was tent burning (can now be seen on Youtube.com!) - the camp site was a very spawled layout, everything was very overpriced etc.; and so naturally people who payed €150 for ticket should be able to voice their concerns and offer feedback. The MCD response is disproportionate and anti-free speech. They need a new PR manager badly!
What an utter joke this is turning out to be and yes of course us consumers have a right to criticise suppliers. Are we supposed to fall silent so others have no clue on our own bad experience?
I agree that instead of fighting legal action (which just gives them a bad name) respond to people's concerns and figure out why there are complaints to find a better solution, isnt that what running a company is about?
Irish internet users should be very clear, and very afraid, about what MCD want. They don't want legitimate redress due to libel and slander; they want to silence critical voices.
In their own words to the Indepedent:
P.
I think that MCD's reaction will just greatly increase the negative publicity they will get. Although I visit boards.ie occasionally (unlike the majority of Irish people) I knew absolutely nothing about the incidents people posted about there until I read the Sunday Times article about the legal action!
This post would seem to suggest that the case isn't about free speech at all, but the release of user data to MCD. (MAJD is a moderator, and thus has access to the private Moderators forum on Boards.) If that is the case, then Boards is perfectly justified in not handing the data over; in fact the person that mentioned the Data Protection Act later in that thread could be right: it could be argued that handing the data over /without/ a court order would be a breach of the DPA.
I just hope Boards doesn't try a free speech defense. They have very little respect for it on Boards.ie, particularly now they're earning real money out of it.
Boards.ie would be in breach of the data privacy legislation if they were to hand over personal data without a proper court order. The same could be said about any website.
We get a lot of US companies asking us for information about data on our network - unless I see a proper request from a Garda superintendent or court order I'll happily ignore it :)
Slightly OT...
Are boards.ie able to set up an account for me on adverts.ie without my permisson??? Well it happened.....:-(
I'm not happy about that at all.
Cormac - I presume they share the same database backend
Adverts.ie is essentially another view on the same data. It's what used to be the 'Shop' section of boards.
Cormac, adverts.ie uses an attachment to vBulletin, hense uses the user database.
You are not at liberty to use boards.ie as your posts are as adverts.ie posts.
Sparky-s - the first part makes sense, but you lost me with the second part.
same here...totally lost...say what now?
Cormac - so it's not just me :)
Sparky-s - maybe you're missing a word or a comma or something ...
typical of MCD narcissistic attitude, I\'ve had bad experiences with them and am sure that I\'m not the only one. Bunch of Fat ***holes as far as im concerned.
Be careful of what you say you can go to jail for it. Is what the SJPD and the Justice department have said.