Ann: Mount Peake Environmental Approvals Update, page-181

Iv gone over the posts from wednesday night, the night of the commencement of the "news" and "company update".

The posts were many and ranged from highly critical of varous entities or persons to frivolous to humorous.

Clearly all were read or viewed from within the company (TNG) and on at least one occasion HC management were contacted by a non posting party ( the companies lawyers) alleging defamatory content!

This appears to have resulted in HC mods reviewing the relevant threads with the result that 9 posts were moderated, one at posters request the other for a number of reasons but the majority as they followed a post that clearly breached HC TOU (5). There were three in total that breached different HC rules.

I came to the view that HC moderators were extremely good. They limited their consoring to those posts that overstepped their rules of were contaminated by such a post. It showed me that the managers/censores were prepared to let the free flow of thoughts and debate unless they absolutely felt they needed to interfere and I personally am impressed with their stance.

In the law of defamation were there is potentially defamatory content there are a number of matters that can be a defence to such an allegation.

The truth is an example, something can be defamatory but if true then the maker of the otherwise defamatory comment has a complete defence.

There is also the defence of "qualified privilege". The comment might be defamatory but the statement is made to a person or party who "should be informed" of the matter.

In the present case the robust debate may fall in part under the later or some other related sub heading. The posts are made by informed stakeholders (SHers) for the benefit of other informed stakeholders about matters which they are entiltled to debate or know about.

This of course is subject to HC rules as they own the forum and we agree to their rules and clear breaches of other civil laws.

Hope the above is informative.

Yes I took advice from a good friend who is the leading Defamation Lawyer in Godzone.