Originally posted by Spad13
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In the UK there are laws against bullying and harassment. Bullying is rarely dealt with in the courts but harassment ( singling out an individual or group of individuals for their race, creed, social status or lawful views ) is a matter for the courts. Harassment isn't just seen as a face to face issue. It can be decreed to have occurred by direct contact, written contact directly or indirectly, hard copy general posting, internet posting....basically, if a person or group of persons believe they have been harrassed and can prove to a court that this has happened then they can commence legal proceedings. Obviously, if the harrasser is in another country, and is not personally identifiable then court action is nigh on impossible against the individual. If the harassment occurs on a website where there is an identifiable individual operating that site (in our case Chris Kilroy) then legal action could be taken against that person. Again, it would be difficult to take that action....unless that person were to set foot on British soil. The pre-existence of a court action against that person would be cause for them to be arrested at the port of arrival for potential further action.
ITS quite clearly harassed people on this site, that is very obvious from the answers to him. It didn't bother me personally, in my job you develop a VERY thick skin. It is not my place, nor anyone elses' to brand the complainers as thin skinned, need to get a life, wishy washy or any other degrading description of them. The fact remains that they felt harassed and / or threatened. ITS's response was to further derogate them. As a result he was given a warning and ( I don't know how many ? ) short term bans. He failed to heed those warnings and was banned. There's nothing biased about that, he was given every chance to modify his behaviour to a reasonable and sensible level.
There are other individuals on this site who fly very close to the wind. Action has not yet been taken against them but the forums are being watched and there may well a need to dole out some written warnings followed by a couple of short term "watch it" bans.
This may be an "Off Topic" forum but that only means that it is a forum for matters that do not relate to the other forums. It does not allow for a total disregard of common manners, racism, degradation or general "putting down" of others. It's very easy to hide behind a screenname and not put any identify data in the personal profile.
I should add that these are my personal views and do not reflect any attitude of the site owner or other crew members.
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