a dire warning to hot copperites

Sydney - Thursday - February 25: (RWE Aust Business News) -
Datamotion Asia Pacific (ASX:DMN) has successfully prosecuted the first
of a series of defamation actions in the Supreme Court of Western
Australia.
Concerned at defamatory comment published on the HotCopper
website in 2009, DataMotion commenced investigations to determine the
identity of the persons posting on the HotCopper site under pseudonyms.
Assisted by an action for preliminary discovery brought against
HotCopper, DataMotion commenced three Supreme Court actions.
The first of these against Graeme Gladman was concluded last
week, with Mr Gladman agreeing to pay damages to DataMotion and its
chairman Ronald Moir (totalling $20,000), taxed legal costs of DataMotion
(totalling $10,000), and provide apologies and undertakings not to
publish further defamatory postings.
Two further actions, one against George Moore (whom DataMotion
alleges made postings under the pseudonym geo_au) and the other against
David Norris (whom DataMotion alleges made postings under the pseudonym
DONEIT) remain pending.
Martin Bennett, General Counsel of Lavan Legal said that there
has been an increasing proliferation of internet chat sites where people
feel free to hide their identities and make defamatory comments about
companies and their executives and directors.
"Although it is a complex process to determine their identity,
these postings can be traced and where necessary legal action can be
taken to stamp out this kind of damaging attack on a company and its
executives," he said.

Reuters.