How did IRC ping timeouts end up in a lawsuit?

Posted by dvaun 6 days ago

How did IRC ping timeouts end up in a lawsuit?(mjg59.dreamwidth.org)

146 points | 21 comments

empathy_m 5 days ago|

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 5 days ago||

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 5 days ago||

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 5 days ago|||

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

eek2121 5 days ago||

...and back in my day (yeah I am becoming an old fart), it was dead simple to cause a netsplit on most networks.

paradox460 5 days ago||

I'll admit to sending a couple of the messages that made Linksys routers restart. I also set up automatic k-lines on Snoonet for these very strings, years ago

oooyay 5 days ago||

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

KK7NIL 5 days ago||

The internet is a "federated" network though, so their point still applies.

RankingMember 5 days ago||

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

zoobab 5 days ago||

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

Trying to bankrupt them with defamation lawsuits does not help.

mjg59 5 days ago|

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.

Neywiny 5 days ago||

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

bombcar 5 days ago||

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

rwmj 5 days ago|

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

runningmike 5 days ago||

tmcz26 5 days ago||

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)_/¯

buckle8017 5 days ago|

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 5 days ago||

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 5 days ago||

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

mjg59 5 days ago|||

To be pedantic: it depends on the last activity of the client, not the user. Anything the client sends counts, even if it's not as a result of user action. This makes it incredibly hard to figure out what could reset that timer - you'd need to know the user's client, its configuration, its plugins and so on.

RIMR 5 days ago|||

I do agree, though, that a pattern of synchronized account activity actually suggests something more than a single example.