"Dear Mr Purcell,
I am a little confused about the Daily Mirror's decision to pull all posts and references to a certain investigation and its representation in the media.

As this particular case is not a pending trial I'm at a loss as to what Terms and Conditions forum users are breaching?

The Daily Mirror to this day portrays and advertises the Mirror Forum as a Public Forum and yet imposes unlawful censorship.

This could very well be seen as manipulating and censoring public opinion, given that the Daily Mirror is misrepresenting the Mirror Forum as a transparent window on public opinion - when it is apparent that is routinely parsed and censured by moderators and admin staff who are alleged to have little or no regard for following the actual Terms and Conditions.

If we were to look at look seriously at Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights on Freedom of Speech, it is difficult to see how all offending posts relating to the case falling under the right to 'protect of the reputation or rights of others'.

For instance, if someone like Colin Stagg had decided to accept an offer of £1 million dollars to his story to the press - the public would have been entitled to vocalise their opinion about its practical and ethical merits.

What forum members cannot do is speculate idly on an investigation, on the individual’s alleged guilt or distribute personal details.

The actual boundaries are sufficiently well defined by law already without having to impose such severe and draconian (and legally questionable) censorship.

Unless there is unequivocal evidence of copyright infringement, profanity, hate speech, defamation, obscenity, issues of security, etc being exercised the Mirror is, quite simply, likely to be violating a number of human rights.

In manipulating and censoring public opinion on issues raised by the case you are misrepresenting public opinion - and it is this that is likely to qualify as an infringement. The Forum is portrayed as an arena in which views and opinions can be exchanged openly but it is commonly alleged that threads and posts are deleted without further explanation from the moderators and serious discussions marred by personal insults and intimidation.

There also appear to be no shortage of people posting comments under multiple identities.

I am sure that Technical Support could look at unusual login and IP activity and find out if any of the above is correct.

Given that the EU has introduced new laws this year to deal with fraudulent blog and forum activity, I feel that the Daily Mirror would be advised to weed out this kind of practice before any formal accusations are levelled.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/t.....361968.ece

Naturally, if the Forum were presented as a specialised Forum for talking about 'Cars', 'Movies' or 'Food' then of course you would be able to treat exceptions to these posts as 'spam'. But you cannot, as far as I am aware, present it as a Forum on Public Opinion ('What You Are Talking About') and unlawfully censor content therein.

I fully accept (and appreciate your efforts) that the issue needed to be addressed and that greater penalties need to be incurred for those wishing to break the Terms and Conditions.

Perhaps a zero tolerance for such posts and more carefully defined boundaries and terms and conditions would have been the more prudent (and fairer) option.

Whilst details pertaining to their guilt or the whereabouts of their daughter should not be under public scrutiny I feel strongly that the media's representation of the case should be under the microscope and that forum members should be allowed to discuss reporting and media behaviour without fear of dismissal.

kind regards,

PaulTorremans