Facebook Firsht

Businessman Mathew Firsht has successfully sued an ex-school

friend, Grant Raphael, both for libel and misuse of private

information, after Mr Raphael created a false profile of Firsht

on the hugely popular social networking website Facebook.

Applause Store Productions, Firsht's company, also received

damages in defamation. This case highlights how easy it is to

create potentially libellous false pages about people on

free-of-charge social networking sites, and could open the

doors for further similar cases. It will no doubt be welcomed

by companies defamed on social networking sites, blogs and

review sites as it confirms their ability to recover damages as

a result of such defamatory postings.

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Businessman Mathew Firsht has successfully sued an

ex-school friend, Grant Raphael, both for libel and misuse of

private information, after Mr Raphael created a false profile

of Firsht on the hugely popular social networking website

Facebook. Applause Store Productions, Firsht's company,

also received damages in defamation. This case highlights how

easy it is to create potentially libellous false pages about

people on free-of-charge social networking sites, and could

open the doors for further similar cases. It will no doubt be

welcomed by companies defamed on social networking sites, blogs

and review sites as it confirms their ability to recover

damages as a result of such defamatory postings.

Facts

Mathew Firsht discovered a false profile of himself on

social networking site Facebook on 4 July 2007. This contained

private information, purporting to include Mr Firsht's

sexual orientation and preferences and his political and

religious views. It also contained a link to a Facebook group

entitled "Has Mathew Firsht lied to you?"

The bulk of the defamatory material was on the group page,

which alleged that Mr Firsht owed the creator "a lot

of money" and had "constantly

lied" about when he would pay.

The webpages had already been live for two weeks at that

point, but Facebook took down the offending material two days

later at Mr Firsht's request. It was discovered that the

profile was created on a computer with the IP address of Grant

Raphael, the defendant.

Mr Firsht and the defendant had become good friends while at

school together in Brighton, but eventually fell out through a

business dispute. They both work in television; Mr Firsht set

up his own company, Applause Store Productions, which...