Is McAlpine Bluffing?

[the-e-dealer]

Apparently he has software that will scan ALL social media sites and then pursue the account holders for damages if they have mentioned any nasty rumours about him? His lawyer says "Make it easy on your self and hand yourself in" I reckon this is a bluff!

[DaveR]

It's pretty cheap to send out a whole load of letters before action, and the settlement money from BBC and ITV means he's already ahead on the deal. Plus, if he takes a scorched earth approach, he's bound to sweep up a reasonable number of people who haven't yet been identified, but who he'd be quite happy to have a go at - lefty types crowing over a Tory paedophile story. Plus he is getting lots of encouragement from folks who think this is a good test of the ability of private civil law to control the excesses of social media. If I was at risk I wouldn't feel confident that he is bluffing.

[Huguenot]

Well if you used one supplier, you could review around 10,000 sites for about ?100.

If he used six or seven he could probably expand that to around 20,000 sites for ?1000 - certainly all the popular ones including this one.

Suppliers he could use would be Radian6, Meltwater Buzz, Brandtology...

I use them for clients everyday.

He'd then have to fight a pretty aggressive battle to get the correspondent details out of the sites - could take years.

Then the question would be whether anyone had said anything that could be considered to be beyond fair comment.

I wouldn't go fessing up anything just yet ;-)

[the-e-dealer]

Not Me "A Friend! "

[DaveR]

"He'd then have to fight a pretty aggressive battle to get the correspondent details out of the sites - could take years."

Actually, this would probably be quite straightforward in this case, particularly where he is not going after the sites themselves. He'd have to get a court order, but the courts have been handing them out pretty freely in P2P copyright infringement cases. Plus, economies of scale - you only ned one order per site.

[Lowlander]

He could well be bluffing. Is that what his lawyer really said to him? This thread is really open to interpretation!

Personally I don't believe a word of it :-)

[the-e-dealer]

Unless you put MC**** is A Bibliophile or similar I Cant see how any software designed to spot Commercial Presence can spot innuendo.

[Huguenot]

DaveR, am I right in saying that it's been more difficult for sites based overseas though?

[Lowlander]

Huguenot Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Well if you used one supplier, you could review

> around 10,000 sites for about ?100.

>

> If he used six or seven he could probably expand

> that to around 20,000 sites for ?1000 - certainly

> all the popular ones including this one.

>

> Suppliers he could use would be Radian6, Meltwater

> Buzz, Brandtology...

>

> I use them for clients everyday.

>

> He'd then have to fight a pretty aggressive battle

> to get the correspondent details out of the sites

> - could take years.

>

> Then the question would be whether anyone had said

> anything that could be considered to be beyond

> fair comment.

>

> I wouldn't go fessing up anything just yet ;-)

And if the poster has any sense, they'll have used a dummy, non-traceble email account. The chances of getting an IP address would be fairly remote for most sites, and even then you could have a hard time trying to nail the case on a unique owner.

In many cases I'd wager it would be nigh on impossible. Unless you're the intelligence arm of a Government of course.

[Huguenot]

Correct t-e-d, reputation management tools can only search for words and context. Common synonyms and euphemisms will be added by operators.

Each occurrence would then be graded, and any borderline ones would be flagged for human review.

Lots will slip through the net, but lots won't.

I think it's largely redundant, an all out attack on society is not an ideal strategy for a democratic party, so it's more likely he'll cherry pick extreme offenders.