How did IRC ping timeouts end up in a lawsuit?

[empathy_m]

Wow, I read the linked case ( https://caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ewhc/kb/2025/3063 ) and the High Court judge's ruling has a remarkably strong and thorough discussion of both modern Internet forum culture and the law. Really interesting writing.

[chrisfosterelli]

A whole other part of this argument that could be made is about the inherent assumption that a ping timeout is caused by an event that only affects one machine.

[kstrauser]

For sure. Having lived on IRC for a while many years ago, I assure any bystanders that this is assuredly not always the case.

[paradox460]

Imagine them trying to sue every person on one side of a netsplit

[oooyay]

Ergo isn't a federated server, it's meant to scale vertically

[RankingMember]

Glad to see a case that could've very easily gone sideways due to its technical nature come out right.

[bombcar]

The facts were never argued, the other party failed to follow procedure.

[rwmj]

After "being warned of the consequences on multiple occasions the Schestowitzes never provided any witness statements", so that's hardly Matthew's fault.

[Neywiny]

This vaguely reminds me of years ago when a friend got hit at an intersection and went to court to fight that he wasn't at fault. I ran the numbers a bit and found that whoever hit him would've been moving at a very high though not outlandish (think maybe 60mph in a 30mph or something) speed. But they never showed up and he won by default

[runningmike]

See also https://techrights.org/i/2025/12/case-judgment-summary.html

[doublerabbit]

> He was awarded substantial damages of £70,000 and was also awarded his costs.

I could do with £70,000 - I'm suing you for your comment of making me jealous of £70k.

[sidewndr46]

This is pretty funny and reminds me of when some company in the US tried to sue someone for copyright infringement. The evidence they offered up was just screenshots of IP addresses, not even a packet log of the traffic in question.

[tmcz26]

Why do I get a 403 when trying to read this? My IP is from Brazil, don’t see a reason to be geoblocked ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[logicziller]

403 Error.

[zoobab]

We need Techrights to expose corrupted institutions like the European Patent Office.

Trying to bankrupt them with defamation lawsuits does not help.

[mjg59]

I'm curious what you think the correct response to defamation is? At multiple opportunities (including the morning of the trial) Roy and Rianne were given the option of just removing the defamatory material and apologising and having the case dropped without having to pay anything. This is in no way my preferred outcome.

[buckle8017]

Ironically I think the technical analysis argues that he could infact be guilty.

He goes from, 11 seconds is a big gap to, anything within 90 seconds could be the same person.

The real question is, how often did the timeouts coincide.

[kstrauser]

It does not. He said that if we're using approximately similar times to establish identity, then by using that logic, it could also establish that Schestowitz was that alleged sockpuppet account. (Transitively, does that mean Garrett and Schestowitz are the same person? Have we ever seen them in a room together? Hmm.)

But honestly, anyone who ever spent any amount of time on IRC is used to seeing 50 people drop from a channel at once. That was usually due to netsplits, which isn't the case here since there was only one IRC server involved, but that wasn't the only cause. "Uh-oh, the IRC server got too laggy and couldn't service all requests within the configured timeout. Time to disconnect everyone!"

[nextaccountic]

Your assumption is that a 11 second delta is a somewhat better evidence than a 90 seconds delta, but the provided article successfully defended this isn't the case IMO. It depends on the last activity of the user

The article also shows that there's a 40 second delta between the harassing account and the harassed person himself, further semonstrating this doesn't mean anything and can happen purely by chance