General Forum Security and Laws

Avenged7Fold said:
Besides the point really as:

1. If the gym and forum were linked, then it was okay to distribute information

2. If the gym is independent, then your gripe is with the forum, which is a separate entity to the gym and so threatening legal action with the forum will do nothing for that situation.

Also, I very much doubt your cousin can do much about distribution of information without a lot of effort for minimal return. As far as the forum goes, they can be argued that information was passed on and processed fairly. Your cousin is accused of harassing on the forum platform and a request was made by the gym to pursue and investigate harassment between gym members and an accusation of drug use. Forums might not take a bit of trolling seriously but gyms do and forums will do if a business informs them that they are the platform for the harassment and accusations. The fact that your cousin was in the wrong to start with puts him at a significant disadvantage when it comes down to pointing fingers.



Really, you have to ask: 'what am i trying to achieve?'

If its getting your cousin out of hot water, than an apology is the only way.
If it is trying to get the forum fined, then you may get somewhere but it is doubtful and not worth the money or effort.
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This is fair enough. My point was I know how to advise him on a personal level. It was more a legal level with how the situation has been handled by the forum/gym owner and then the subsequent repercussions....everyone has made mistakes and are young....he will learn from it. But my point is, what if this now spirals out of further control? What if something serious happens and yet it could have been prevented by what I perceive and possibly legally should have happened with the information?!
 
Kingdom34 said:
But my point is, what if this now spirals out of further control? What if something serious happens and yet it could have been prevented by what I perceive and possibly legally should have happened with the information?!
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I think that boat has now sailed though.

If something serious happens such as "X" beating your cousin up for his trolling - bringing legal action to the forum owners for revealing his identity to a 3rd party without his consent isn't going to prevent that.

As everyone else says, he'd be better off speaking with X and "John" and apologising both about his behaviour.
 
Kingdom34 said:
This is fair enough. My point was I know how to advise him on a personal level. It was more a legal level with how the situation has been handled by the forum/gym owner and then the subsequent repercussions....everyone has made mistakes and are young....he will learn from it. But my point is, what if this now spirals out of further control? What if something serious happens and yet it could have been prevented by what I perceive and possibly legally should have happened with the information?!
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He's probably fairly angry with himself right now so the best advice you can give him is to calm down, be an adult and apologise for his actions. Giving him any whiff of "you might be able to sue the forum" is not going to help him in the long run at all. Once he escalates to that sort of thing, there's no going back.
 
Updated the OP with executive summary.

Cousin gon' ge' whopped. Serves him right for trolling and creating this whole scenario really :o
 
Yup as said, the forum and gym people will be happy when the clients are satisfied. They will be satisfied if he apologises and buries this argument. Dont think you can comfort your cousin with ideas of strong arming the cousin or gym as that ship has sailed already since the people know about it.

Law regarding privacy of information is quite a grey area and very much situation dependant. Since your cousin has cause to be investigated by both the gym and forum and is also obviously found to be in the wrong, i think arguing anything about privacy of information will get you nowhere.

Ignoring the situation is stupid considering an apology is free.

What were you hoping to achieve from knowing more about privacy and information laws? Whether or not it is legal, the damage is done and if it spirals out of control, that wont be due to the forum or gym but rather Mr X and John. If he thinks he is in danger he can go to the police and explain the story.

My advice would be to apologise in a public place like the gym if he really thinks he is going to get a beating. Get him to speak to the gym and say he wants to straighten it out and they will be gagging for the opportunity to bury the situation so neatly. He makes a apology in a nice public place supervised by the gym staff and that will get noted down in a little book of gym incidents and will probably have membership suspended but that is it. Your cousin gets a proper punishment that doesn't end in a beating, the gym guys are satisfied with the membership being revoked and the apology or risk facing a very obvious finger pointed to them if something happens afterwards.
 
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How does the forum know who your cousin is anyway? :confused: Unless he's a complete spacker who has made his personal info public and still decides to troll...
 
Kingdom34 said:
My question is, has the Gym owner breached any data protection laws here...ie giving John the details once they have obtained then?
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I can understand that I believe the Forum Mods have the right to give the details to the Gym owner, but then after this where does the law stand with distribution?
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AFAIK the forum owners are the ones who are/were supposed to look after the private data on their servers and the ones liable to fines/action if the data gets out inappropriately.

On the other hand your cousin perhaps shouldn't have been slagging off someone else at his gym, especially someone who gets roid rage and would be looking for the person behind the offending posts. Unless your cousin would have the balls to say it to the guy's face then... I guess lesson learned or potentially lesson soon to be learned.

Then again if your cousin does get beaten up as a result of this then the forum owners and gym owner could be in a bit of trouble if he was to lawyer up.

Also WTF is the gym not handling this situation appropriately:

This trolled member, goes into the gym, looking for the John he thinks it is, as hes been tipped off by someone to look at the forum.
Luckily this John wasn't about.
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if you mean to imply this guy with supposed roid rage was going to do some physical harm to this innocent bloke John then the gym owner really ought to have banned him - that isn't something a business ought to tolerate or try to arbitrate by investigating who did the slagging off etc.. roid rage guy was in the wrong and a potential liability to the business regardless of whether John said something about him or not.
 
I doubt this roider was going to go round and fold a stranger on a rumour.

OP prob got told this story by his petrified cousin who was quaking in his boots and imagining the worst case scenario. To me this is a case of talking smack and getting caught, with no risk of anyone getting beaten up until OP cousin decides to do something stupid like try to avoid the guy or deny the accusation.

How the hell does his cousin know this roid brah is going to beat him up? It's not like the guy is going round telling people like a cheesy 80's movie. Fears of getting beaten up are the just the paranoid ramblings of a troll who is getting his comeuppance and an apology would settle the matter before it escalates.
 
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