Owlstalk Case ends but Fight to Change Law goes on

The news that the case concerning Owlstalk, the Sheffield Wednesday Forum, is now over must come as a real relief to those supporters who were deemed by directors of Wednesday to have made libelous statements. But the fight to get the law changed goes on.

George Monbiot recently discussed the case in the Guardian.

In the past few days, Sheffield Wednesday Football Club has dropped its cases against some of its fans. I am now allowed to write about the worst example of legal bullying I have ever seen.

The club has had serious problems, on and off the pitch, and many of its fans use an internet forum - owlstalk.co.uk - to discuss them. They make the kind of comments you would expect to find on any talk board, and which would normally be forgotten within 15 minutes. Two and half years ago the club launched its first suit. Only now have the people who posted these comments emerged blinking from the labyrinthine nightmare of English law.

In essence Sheffield Wednesday went to court to to demand the names and email addresses of 14 people who had posted comments on Owlstalk.

Below are some of the posts:

"What an embarrassing, pathetic, laughing stock of a football club we've become."

"Another day, another blunder. I doubt even Leeds were in such a mess this time last summer, and look what happened to them."

"I am waiting with bated breath to hear who the Chuckle Brothers have signed after their trip to watch players abroad. With the amount of money they have to spend and the wages they can offer the best we can hope for is that little known Transvestitavian International I Sukblodov, who last scored in a brothel."

Sheffield Wednesday's lawyers thought these posts were 'false and seriously defamatory messages'. The posts were said to have caused grievous injury to the 'delicate flowers' who ran the club.

The lawyers threatened "proceedings to include claims for injunctions, damages, interest and legal costs (which could be substantial)".

The judge threw most of the application out, but instructed the forum's host to reveal the email addresses of four of the posters.

Although the case took place a year ago, the club's lawyers dropped the case last week.

Monbiot then describes another case which dates back to February 2006.

Sheffield Wednesday sent a warning letter to a fan called Nigel Short. When he received the letter he offered to apologise and to change his comments, but the club rejected this. He was able to fight it only because he found a lawyer - Mark Lewis of George Davies Solicitors in Manchester - who was incensed by this case and was prepared to represent him.

"I've had two and a half years of worrying I was going to lose my house," Short tells me. "It's been hell. If Mark hadn't done this no win, no fee, I would have been bankrupt by now."

In November 2007, Short was diagnosed with throat cancer. The case continued. But on Wednesday September 3 he announced that his treatment had been successful. On Friday September 5, the club dropped the case and agreed to pay his costs. It issued a press release which suggested it had done so because of "Mr Short's medical condition".

I asked the club whether it had abandoned the case because it knew that Short would now live to fight the action. It has refused to answer my questions.

Monbiot suggests that the law needs reforming. He claims it favours those with money such as the directors of Sheffield Wednesday.

The point of this story is not that the directors of Sheffield Wednesday have behaved like a bunch of petulant bullies. It's that the law equips them to do so. Most people see this as an issue only for journalists. But the internet ensures that the law of defamation now threatens anyone who stands up for what he believes to be right.

This autumn the English branch of PEN, which defends the freedom to write, will launch a campaign against our libel law. But where are the rest of you? Where are the petitions, the public protests, the lobbies of parliament? Why is this 13th-century law still permitted to stifle legitimate dissent? Wake up, Britain: your freedoms are disappearing into the pockets of barristers and billionaires.

So, for the time being, posters still need to be careful what they write on forums, such as Bulls Banter.

(George Monbiot is the journalist who attempted an unsuccessful citizen's arrest on John Bolton, former US ambassador to the UN, for alleged war crimes at the Hay-on-Wye Festival last May.)

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