I got an email on Tuesday that I would describe as aggressive in its approach, accusing me of libelling various people, and demanding that I remove that material from my site.

Problem was ... the retired senior business man had got hold of the wrong end of the stick. I hadn't even heard of the people I was accused of libelling, and a quick look into the facts of the case lead me to an obscure link from a previous article here to a site that's nothing to do with me, and about which I even said "I cannot, of course, confirm that the information on this other site is correct". It wasn't even the page that I linked to that contains the material that is considered inappropriate - you actually have to follow links to other pages to find it.

With such a senior figure, who had copied his email to a solicitor and also to a senior member of a local business organisation in North and West Wilts, I had to take the matter seriously and this lead me to thinking Can a web content provider responsible for the content of sites that he links to?

Views on this appear to differ - with the Gent in question contending that a web site owner IS responsible for what he links to (and sending me the URL of his own site which, when you look around it has no outside links) taking one view, and nearly everyone else taking the opposite view. My goodness - where would Google be if they could not provide links to external sites?

I have advised the gentleman in question that he has got the wrong of the stick in attributing the content of that other site to me, and given him contact details from that other site and from the domain registrar's site so that he can take the matter up directly with them. And it has been suggested to him by the other kind folks he copied in that he's attempting to shoot the messenger. That should be another cue for a photograph to illustrate a proverb, but shooting the messenger can get very messy, but messengers are often useful people to have around and you don't want to go round shooting them just for a picture - you never know when they could be useful to you, alive, later.
(written 2008-12-12)

 A213 - Web Application Deployment - Commercial and Legal Aspects
  [3168] Web Sites - Subject to Advertising Standards from 1st March - check your sites - (2011-02-13)
  [3104] Catering in Syracuse, the Saigon Cafe, stolen images and Christmas - (2010-12-25)
  [3016] The legal considerations of your web presence - revisited - (2010-10-26)
  [2686] Freedom of Information - consideration for web site designers - (2010-03-20)
  [2592] Re-using our pictures - (2010-01-21)
  [2252] Leaping dog, Leaping horse, copyright of old masters - (2009-06-20)
  [2140] Beware - giving copyright away when you upload a picture - Dogs Trust - (2009-04-25)
  [1840] Validating Credit Card Numbers - (2008-10-14)
  [1747] Who is watching you? - (2008-08-10)
  [1506] Ongoing Image Copyright Issues, PHP and MySQL solutions - (2008-01-14)
  [1486] Does anyone understand Lithuanian? - (2007-12-27)
  [1485] Copyright and theft of images, bandwidth and members. - (2007-12-26)
  [1431] Getting the community on line - some basics - (2007-11-13)
  [1054] UK legal requirements for your commercial web site - (2007-01-27)
  [994] Training on Cascading Style Sheets - (2006-12-17)
  [876] Making pages clearer - easy Disability Discrimination Act Compliance - (2006-09-23)
  [795] Remember a site's non-technical issues too - (2006-07-07)
  [759] Watch your Google profile - (2006-06-13)
  [746] Domain Listing Center and Domain Registry of America - (2006-06-06)
  [532] Copyright - how much can I legally copy? - (2005-12-17)
  [322] More maps - (2005-05-23)
  [320] Ordnance Survey - using a 'Get a map' - (2005-05-22)
  [288] Colour blindness for web developers - (2005-04-22)
  [259] Responding to spam - (2005-03-27)
  [142] Colour for access - (2004-12-06)

Z401 - Federation of Small Businesses
  [3522] Networking - North and West Wilts FSB Style - (2011-11-15)
  [3214] Melksham Campus - any last minute inputs from Melksham businesses? - (2011-03-26)
  [3032] Coincidence, or Conspiracy - a wrong email address - (2010-11-06)
  [2524] An update on legal changes from the FSB? - (2009-12-03)
  [2517] Blogging accuracy - open invitation for any corrections - (2009-11-29)
  [1880] Melksham Chamber of Commerce, or the FSB - (2008-11-12)
  [1855] Volunteer v Employee - a skewed balance? (FSB) - (2008-10-25)
  [1823] FSB - an update. - (2008-10-07)
  [1654] The old sayings are the best (FSB) - (2008-05-26)
  [1544] FSB, EGM, AGM. - (2008-02-18)
  [1515] Keeping staff up to date on hotel room status - (2008-01-22)
  [1512] Summer Ball at Bowood - Saturday 12th July 2008 - (2008-01-19)
  [1479] FSB leaves its members feeling like mushrooms - (2007-12-20)
  [1350] FSB (Federation of Small Businesses) Western Region - (2007-09-13)
  [1286] A wasted evening? - (2007-08-01)
  [1284] An update on the West Wilts show ... - (2007-07-30)
  [1278] West Wilts Show - (2007-07-26)
  [1249] Is this how to run a business for businesses? - (2007-06-27)
  [1246] An oddball day. Strange experiences! - (2007-06-27)
  [1157] Speed Networking - a great evening and how we arranged it - (2007-04-21)
  [1133] B-2-B Networking, 20th April. Useful for YOUR business? - (2007-04-03)
  [1097] Train and business balls all in the air! - (2007-03-02)
  [1078] Wiltshire - multicultural community - (2007-02-13)

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Server - Service - Engine - Host, Tomcat
URL rewriting with front and back servers
mod_proxy_ajp and mod_proxy_balancer examples
Predictive Load Balancing - PHP and / or Java
Getting hold of the wrong end of the stick
Quick Summary - PHP installation
Summary of MySQL installation on a Linux system
Lidl opens in Melksham
Learning to Program in C
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