“Does them no favours”
UK business - free speech is American, not UK.
An even in the US, it is only the government that is restrained from restricting free speech. A business or individual can set and enforce standards for speech on its/their website and premises.
This
Same in the UK, freedom of speech/expression of opinion (in regard to political or religious beliefs) is protected by law. However there are more restrictions in place, eg language that defames, incites terrorism, hate crimes, harasses etc.
Lol and "freedom of speech" just means that the US government can't put you in jail for critiquing the US government. That's literally all it means.
This isn't a government forum. Its a private company's property. You and I have zero right, nor should have expectation of freedom of speech on someone else's property.“Does them no favours”, so in other Words, suppress the open opinion, and freedom of speech. Sounds familiar
I didn't suggest they censor criticisms or concerns about themselves. I just suggested that this peer-to-peer support forum is not the place for such criticisms. Allowing anyone, a mixture of customers, potential customers, competitors, even bad actors, to diss your company on your own support forum? Well, it just wouldn't happen if it was mine. But it isn't, so it's academic.
I do consider it valuable (if not essential) to be able to ask critical questions, to give critical feedback or to criticize to product on the customer forums - they should not be reduced to a cheerleading community. It is of value for XenForo as well as for the community and I value that XF makes this possible. The issue is that in these forums this opportunity has evolved to another level and is heavily misused by a small, but very loud minority. Criticism should be respectful and constructive, but what we see here is to relevant amount destructive and w/o any respect. Made up statements, outright lies that could count as defamation and a tone that is often simply not acceptable. Some people simply lack the responsibility that comes with the opportunity. When called out on it they claim it would be their right (I've never heard of a right for defamation) or they would just "share their opinion" (as i.e. seen in this very thread) or "give feedback", demand their "right of free speech" (obviously having no idea what they are talking about) and basically behave like the literal Karen in the worst possible way.
Can I see a copy of this court order?
I'm glad they did. Kudos to them.
You'd obviously have to ask XF for that (or the Sands that made the claim). I'd however doubt that anyone would hand it over to you.
No, it's a restricted document.
Why? Either the court order is real and that information can be verified, or the court order isn't real and XenForo just leaks user data to anyone who asks for it. If there is a court order, it can dispel any concerns of trust. If there isn't one, and XenForo just leaks data, it raises questions as to why they wouldn't be willing to leak the correspondence that led up to the decision to leak user data, assuming that such a decision was reasonable to begin with. Either privacy is a concern or it isn't.
Do you actually know this? By who's authority? Is this an English thing where all court orders are automatically sealed? How do you know the court order is even real? I am genuinely curious what series of logical steps led up to the point where you believe that the court order is real but cannot be acknowledged officially.
You are making things up. As it is mentioned in the court's protocol of the trial it is obviously real. No one has doubted that it would be. You are missing the issue which is that information has reached the plaintiffs before that order took place and it currently looks as if that info came in one way or another from someone from XF. This is what makes some people unhappy/nervous/angry/whatever.
Presumably for the same reason that Google dumps hundreds of thousands of DMCA takedown notices to Chilling Effects's Lumen Database: transparency and accountability?
Interesting, as it is linked already in the second posting of the thread, countless times afterwards and others had no issues fining the document.
Here you go:
Presumably the case was not in the US but in the UK, the person that has been sued is not Google and has no interest in making anything public (rather the opposite) and obviously a NPO ist something completely different from a DMCA takedown notice. You are not only comparing apples with oranges - it simply makes it impossible to have a discussion that is of any meaning if you continue like you started over the postings you did in this thread.
So when I was told this:
And this:
That is a lie by a misinformed person who somehow also missed 20 reiterations of the same thing?
Did XenForo lawfully follow court orders in the procedurally correct way or did they not?