The Darkest Evil

I got a response from Jelsoft about a Cease and Desist order I sent them recently. Basically, if you don’t know the situation, people on vB.org are constantly abusing the feedback feature and posting libellous content about me and my business on vB.org. So, out of desperation, I wrote a Cease & Desist order to Jelsoft about the matter (hasn’t appeared on Chillingeffects.org yet) and Ashley Bubsy took the ticket. Anyway, I got a reply today stating ”
Bearing in mind that we do keep a close eye on these sorts of things and providing that they are in the rules, they are allowed. This enables others to provide their side of the story, without namecalling or posting personal data so that users can share their experiences. These threads are monitored and cleaned up if appropriate and the threads that you have highlighted are within these guidelines. As you have mentioned that we have received your final communication, please consider that matter concluded.”.

Defamation is NOT allowed under British law. I know because I have done a vast amount of research on the subject and so far, what I have requested is perfectly fair. Threads and posts like the ones made at vB.org about my business could be mistaken as fact rather than fiction. Therefore, I should hope that companies take the matter of defamation very seriously and take measures to stop it. Jelsoft is obviously not going to do anything positive to help reduce the amount of defamation that occurs on their customer forums. And seeing as these forums ARE search engine indexable, this creates a problem and makes acquiring new clients a harder sell.

So, my question to Jelsoft is why do they allow their clients to practise anti-social behaviour under their banner? Why do they allow people like Howard Spinks to take down the licence for the vBulletin of innocents despite having no basis to do so? Why do they try to cover things up instead of admitting to the truth and eventually doing the right thing? Tyme even states that there are lessons that could be gained from owning up to the truth and doing the right thing. She gained more respect for FeedBurner because they answered to their problems. But Jelsoft LOVES to cover up and bury their misactions and take a page from the Catholic Church’s scandal management manual. They would not answer to the Hongfire mess and they allow Howard Spinks of Pirate Reports to run amok. This also affects the people over at phpFox who also use Pirate Reports’ services.

However, if you look at Hongfire, there is a thread that contains a lot of unsavoury comments about Jelsoft. Eventually, in the end, Jelsoft did the right thing by reinstating the licence but they never really answered to the problem. There was no PR statement, no announcement and any threads about the subject on vB.com forums, vB.org forums and Pirate Reports get locked and buried pretty quickly. So this creates a bit of a problem. So Jelsoft and Hongfire are both wrong in how to manage their members in that they both practise the exact opposite extreme as the other. This is a huge problem for Jelsoft and a huge problem for Hongfire. But if you look at the situation, you could say that Hongfire was in the right, given the communications between Hongfire and Howard Spinks, communications between others and Jelsoft and the communications with Howard Spinks throughout the Internet Community.

Tags: cease_and_desist, defamation, jelsoft, legality, libel, Protection, united_kingdom

This entry was posted on Monday, March 19th, 2007 at 10:45 am and is filed under Protection. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.