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In Reply to: RE: Me neither posted by Frihed89 on August 6, 2007 at 00:06:40
Precisely.
"Shilling" in the context of an auction is fraud and is prosecuted criminally. A couple of years ago I recall reading where E-Bay worked with federal prosecutors in exposing and prosecuting shills on that site. Shilling means participating in the bidding as an agent of the seller to drive up the auction price.
So, if you call "John Doe" a shill, you're accusing him of a crime. If that accusation is false, then you've defamed him; and he can sue you.
The term also is used more loosely to describe someone who touts a certain product on a place like AA without disclosing that he is acting for the seller or manufacturer of the product. That is not a crime. In the early years of AA there was a Plinius Board member who was shilling for Plinius products here. He was outed, to the great embarrassment of the company, which did not know or approve of his conduct.
I'm not sure that there's a huge value in witch-hunting these kind of people; they get found out anyway. And, as others in this thread have recognized, lots of folks are enthusiastic about the stuff they own -- and say so at AA. There should be nothing wrong with that, and they shouldn't be branded as "shills." The posting rules do address touting by manufacturers and dealers; and those rules should be enforced.
Regarding true shilling (i.e. false bidding), why should AA be exposed even to the hassle of dealing with the consequences of people's efforts to clean up some other commercial site? AA gets no benefit from that. If a particular site becomes known as a home for fraudsters, people will stop using it. So the site has an interest in policing what goes on, as apparently E-Bay at least does.
Follow Ups:
but who needs the hassle is right.
Public figures must show intentional or reckless misrepresentations. Private individuals, and most of your proposed targets would be private individuals, need only show that the statement about them was false and disparaging. In fact, if the statement is in writing or widely broadcasted (libel) then they need not even prove actual damages.
Anyway, that's my recollection from law school, which was about 14 years ago. Now I do licensing and collaboration agreements with biotech companies, so what do I know?
But it's a risky area and not worth pursuing, though part of me thinks it's a neat idea!
In most US states, the standard for private figures is negligence, not strict liability. But who wants to take a shot at proving that they exercised due care before branding someone as a criminal?
At least with respect to the U.S., Jay's statement is wrong. There is no standard of "knowing or intentional," even for public figure plaintiffs. "Reckless" will do it for them.
So public figures must show either reckless or intentional and private figures must only show negligence. That makes sense, rather than strict liability. But if you accuse someone of a crime they didn't commit, I betcha it won't be too hard for him or her to prove negligence unless you REALLY did your homework. I'd find that plaintiff pretty sympathetic if wrongly labeled a shill.
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