Brian Goudie - Internet Harassment and 'trolls' - and making Google take notice!

Brian Goudie - taking on Google

Over the past 18 months I have been the subject of a calculated and coordinated campaign of internet harassment.

My name is Brian Goudie, I work in Thailand, and I have decided to break my silence and start a 'name and shame' campaign - and I hope the people that I name will try to sue me, as I have a carefully documented dossier of evidence that has been painstakingly assembled to record every, post, comment and email - the file is massive!

You may ask, all of this data has been recorded for what purpose?  The answer is simple - criminal actions under Thailand's tough Computer Crimes Act, and potentially future proceedings in the UK under the Prevention of Harassment Act.

The main site at the centre of the campaign has a whois address in the UK, and UK law requires us to show there was a 'course of conduct' involving more than two instances of harassment - in my case there are hundreds.

I know exactly where it started, and where the epicentre of the campaign lies - a 'news' site where the administrator/owner has allowed about a dozen internet 'trolls' to post comments on his site, and then those trolls have posted elsewhere using fake profiles, and the material has gradually spread throughout other social media.

The owner of the 'news' site is a convicted criminal having in February of this year being sentenced to 4 months in jail (Suspended for one year) for similar behaviour against two of my friends. Following that conviction he has recently been ordered by Pattaya Court to post bail in another case, with another half dozen or so cases in the pipeline.

The seemingly never ending campaign of harassment has resulted in over two hundred 'news stories' written about just three individuals with hundreds of comments on the central site and other social media such as Google Plus, Facebook, Twitter and other more obscure sites.

The comments from the trolls utilise just about every insulting word in the English language!

The burning question - why just three singled out when there are many others on the site - well easy answer, the three of us decided what wss going on was just not right, and filed Court cases - as soon as the first case was filed, the 'news stories' increased, often misreporting decades old stories.

Recent allegations result in the journalist and his trolls taking on the role of judge, jury and executioner - even before there is a real issue to be reported -more on that later.

More recently, my friends, family, ex-girlfriend and current girlfriend have been receiving comments, messages and emails from the journalist and the trolls telling them how terrible it all is, and how terrible their future will be.

The 'news' is of course not real news, it is a mixture of scarce facts held together by ourright lies, half truths and insults. It has included invasions into my private life.

Any journalism expert will tell you a journalist would never alter a news photograph ie use photoshop to electronically alter the photo - but using electronically alteredmimages is the particular specialty of this 'journalist', now with dozens of altered photographs appearing on his ' news' site.

And yes, before you ask, I am taking him to Court for the photographs, and all that did was make him post more fake 'photoshop' images and post them repeatedly.

A credible journalist, abiding by true journalism standards, would never allow a photoshopped image to be posted - the UK Editors Code of Practice specifically forbids this (our journalist is from the UK).

David Hanks - victim of internet harassment.

Late last week, my colleague (David Hanks) and I decided we had had enough of the trolls and instructed our lawyers to file proceedings against internet giant Google - the 'news' site is hosted on Blogger. That case is expected to first come to Court in Bangkok in July 2014.

We are not however suing Google for the 'news' site, but instead for search results, and also for allowing trolls to set up fake profiles with no certification of ID. Our friend the journalist gets a mention of course, as he had previously written an article referring to the use of SEO to 'manipulate Google'.

Under Thailand's tough Computer Crimes Act, if I cant find the troll, I can sue the service provider - in this case mainly Google, but we are also now looking at Facebook, Yahoo, Twitter, Bing, Youtube, etc.

And now to internet trolls, what and who are they, and what motivates them?

I really like this image, as in my opinion the trolls truly are pathetic, and if you see some of the things I post about them you will see I dont agree with traditional theory of suffering in silence. I have found that hitting back and calling them for what they are has dampened their enthusiasm.

Morevover, we have now identified one of the trolls, and he will face Court on June 2nd 2014.

Recently, a study found that some internet trolls my actually be mentally ill.

A troll called 'Ben' who was interviewed by news.com.au is recorded as saying:

"It just makes me happy when I can make someone angry. It sounds weird but I kind of feed off the Internet trolling—the act of writing deliberately provocative or hurtful things on message boards and social media—seems to be everywhere these days, ...............The angrier I can get them, the better I feel," he told news.com.aU

'Ben' said the worst thing he ever did was vandalise the Facebook memorial page of a young girl who had committed suicide. "I wrote, 'How's it hanging guys'."

'Ben' doesn't feel any remorse, and strangely doesn't consider his actions bullying despite claiming he probably wouldn't have started trolling if he had not been bullied at school.

The whole campaign of internet harassment in my case centred around the 'news' site, and all the posters on the 'news' site would also post on my Blogger and Facebook and various other social media sites.

Initially, I stayed quiet and took the advice of many to try to ignore it and report it to Google - and it got worse, and the number of fake profiles increased and the number of posts mushroomed - some days as many as 10 to 20 posts would drop in my inbox!

And what did Google do when I reported all of this - nothing!

I filed many reports with Google, and recently filed a 20 page detailed complaint and received the same standard response from Google every time - Google is not a mediator of content and is protected by the Communications Decency Act Code 220 (defamation) - although our US based legal team says it is not likely to be protected in the current case.

If you make a report to Google they are likely to tell you they are not responsible for the content, but a number of Court cases around the world have shaken that presumption.

 Recent examples of Google's worsening Court woes are cases in the UK such as  Tamiz v Google and in Trijulka v Google in Australia.  The recent case in Spain in the European Court of Justice dealing with the 'right to be forgotten' only adds to Google's woes.

Because internet harassment is a new area of law, many jurisdictions are ill equipped to deal with it, although in the jurisdictions I am interested in, the UK, Thailand and Australia news laws such as amendments to the Prevention of Harassment Act (UK) and the Computer Crimes Act (Thailand) are starting to address the issue.

In the US, the Communications Decency Act makes much of the conduct I will write about is a US Federal Offence.

And today many thanks to +Spinosa +knutsa01 +Ally +samthai +theweapon +jules +tommyweapon +tommythruthsearcher + Spinosaj without whom my case against Google would not be possible.