Re: Should mailing list bans be published?
Christoph Anton Mitterer <calestyo@scientia.net> writes:
> Perhaps one should think whether such publishing might have legal
> consequences...
> In some countries (like the US) it seems not be so uncommon to publicly
> name offenders or criminals on webpages... in Europe though, you might
> get into legal troubles.
In the United States, fact is an absolute defense against libel, so a web
page or email message stating simply that "this email address has been
banned from this mailing list" or "the author of the message at URL has
been banned from this mailing list" is not actionable. I don't know to
what extent this applies in other countries, however.
Regardless of the legalities, I think that's the sort of notification that
we should present. There's not much gained in trying to characterize the
reasons for the ban beyond pointing to an applicable sample, and quite a
bit to be lost (particularly since it's an invitation to continue the
argument via other means).
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
Reply to: