Dr Matthew Garrett v Dr Roy Schestowitz and Anor

https://caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ewhc/kb/2025/3063

by jonty • 8 months ago

113 96 8 months ago

caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk

mythz• 8 months ago

Basically Matthew Garret sued owners of www.techrights.org and news.tuxmachines.org for libel, was successful and was awarded £70,000 in damages.

In my judgment, in all these circumstances, the minimum sum necessary to convince a fair-minded bystander of the baselessness of the allegations against him, to vindicate his reputation and restore his standing, and to compensate him for the consequences he has suffered, is £70,000.

jmclnx• 8 months ago

Thanks, I had noticed Techrights had it out for MG, but I never understood why. I still do not know the reason for TR to go after him.

jeroenhd5• 8 months ago

According to the judgement, it appears that techrights and tuxmachines do experience real harassment and have convinced themselves that MG is behind it all.

From their perspective, they're retaliating with the same force MG is supposedly using against them. I could understand that, if MG was actually behind the harassment, which this lawsuit would be the best place possible to lay out their proof for but ended up not being convincing enough not to cost them 70k pounds.

I doubt they'll be convinced that MG isn't behind the attacks, but hopefully their weird lashing out against him will stop now.

I hope TR/TM do find and stop the harassment they receive, because as much as their libel is a problem, they actually are victims themselves.

gwd• 8 months ago

From the ruling:

69. It is plain that the onslaught of sockpuppet trolling to which Mrs Schestowitz in particular was subjected was a truly appalling experience – the very antithesis of everything Tuxmachines and Techrights stands for in the free software community. There is not the slightest suggestion that either Dr or Mrs Schestowitz did anything to invite or deserve it. They are both clearly and justifiably angered, dismayed, distressed and hurt by it.
71. It is also plain enough that Dr and Mrs Schestowitz have found it entirely straightforward to convince themselves that Dr Garrett was behind the trolling. But the task they have given themselves in pleading the truth defence in defamation proceedings is to establish or prove, on the balance of probabilities, that that is objectively true. And they have made that exceptionally difficult for themselves by advancing no evidence for it.

raverbashing• 8 months ago

to convince a fair-minded bystander

Ah yes the Man on the Clapham omnibus ruler

kasabali• 8 months ago

£70,000 in "damages"

Damn, libel law is ridiculous.

ceejayoz4• 8 months ago

UK libel law is very friendly to the plaintiff.

benjojo123• 8 months ago

Is it though?

If someone posts a huge amount of articles about how you are various non-good things, then a employer might do a simple Google of your name on and think "Oh, actually, I don't think I want to hire that guy" that's worth quite a lot of money if that's a job that you actually wanted to get (and that results in a loss of income/opportunities)

Typically speaking, you should probably only be saying things on the internet or otherwise that you have serious evidence for. One, to avoid looking like a complete idiot in case you're wrong or in a more serious case to stop you from being sued for libel

It blows my mind how various parts of the wider world are seemingly quite happy to ("joking" or not) call each other pedophiles or various other things in a age where things are aggressively indexed by search engines or (worse) LLMs

ryandrake• 8 months ago

Hard to tell if you are arguing whether 70k is ridiculously large or ridiculously small.

theoldgreybeard2• 8 months ago

700,000 would have been better.

bawolff4• 8 months ago

After reading the judgement, its honestly kind of low.

They basically refused to submit any evidence at all in their defense, and then were racist to the opposing side's lawyer.

rmoriz• 8 months ago

IRC is back.

This is a dispute between prominent ‘free software movement’ activists. The free software movement advances a philosophy and practice which values the freedom of users to create and share software enabling internet access, and challenges the dominance of ‘big tech’ software and systems over the online experience. That includes a preference for internet relay chat (‘IRC’), an online instant messaging system dating in origin from the 1990s, over the big social media platforms. The challenge the free software movement makes is not only of a technical, but also of a social, economic or ethical nature, and it espouses some wider sets of values accordingly

raphlinus• 8 months ago

Matthew's side of the story is here: https://mastodon.online/@mjg59@nondeterministic.computer/115...

ceejayoz4• 8 months ago

Direct link: https://nondeterministic.computer/@mjg59/115581959497817474

hamdingers• 8 months ago

Here's the other side, for what it's worth: https://news.tuxmachines.org/n/2025/11/20/Today_s_Judgement....

tptacek5• 8 months ago

A grim portent for their mental health, given the attempt to reframe a judgement that demolished them and called them "character assassins" as supportive.

Really, though, this is the first time I've ever looked at TechRights for real, and the whole place is very... Always Sunny meme.

rideontime• 8 months ago

Imagine me wearing my context hat and context shirt, pointing to my sign that reads "I require context."

TRiG_Ireland• 8 months ago

The first four paragraphs of the judgment lay out most of it. Matthew Garrett's summary at https://nondeterministic.computer/@mjg59/115581959497817474 is as follows:

In and around 2023, Roy and Rianne Schestowitz were subject to a horrific campaign of online harassment. Unfortunately they blamed me for it, and in turn wrote and published an astonishing array of articles making false accusations against me. Last year, I sued them in the high court in London. In turn, they countersued me for harassment. The case was heard last month and I'm pleased to say that the counterclaim was dismissed and I prevailed in my case. The court awarded me £70,000 in damages.

I've never heard of any of these people before, so for now I'm taking that as true at face value, given that he won.

postexitus3• 8 months ago

What was the harassment TR/TM was receiving and what was the libel they directed at MG? (juicier gossip please)

mmaunder• 8 months ago

Yes yes. If we're going to keep this on the front page, we need more juice from the squeeze.

fancyfredbot5• 8 months ago

Dr Garrett is chiefly accused of an online campaign of material which is (variously) criminal, illegal or offensive. The criminal matters alleged include cybercrime, hate crime, blackmail, issuing threats of violence or death, and matters adjacent to terrorism. Other illegal matters alleged include defamation, harassment and online abuse. Offensive matters alleged include material that is variously racist, antisemitic, misogynist, homophobic or otherwise hateful or discriminatory, sexually incontinent, or drugs-related. Dr Garrett is alleged to have waged this campaign through the medium of IRC ‘sockpuppet’ accounts – accounts under pseudonymous user nicknames intended to be a vehicle for distributing material anonymously and deniably.

You can see the harassment they were recieving here. There was some pretty vile stuff directed at Rianne in particular.

https://news.tuxmachines.org/n/2023/08/11/Garrett_Committing...

postexitus3• 8 months ago

This is a wild read. Reminds me of blogs written by the Temple OS guy. I wonder how they decided that this is coming from MG - there must be a backstory.

marc-h38• 8 months ago

If you ignore Matt for a moment (really hard, I know), the page https://techrights.org/wiki/Matthew_J_Garrett/ is the most stunning demonstration of how NOT to react to trolling. The "documentation" effort behind it made the trolls harassing that couple more successful than I thought was ever possible.

"Don't feed the trolls": yet that site is a city-size open buffet giving the trolls massive exposure and encouraging them to come again and again for more. Which they kept doing because they were getting exactly what they were after: an amazing amount of attention, time and hurt. Unbelievable.

Why didn't they restrict access their IRC server / channels for a while? If IRC can't do that, then it's a good thing it died. Or was that server left wide open out of some extreme (and: very naive) "freedom" ideology maybe? No, you can't just leave your door wide open to everyone using the Internet = billions of random people. How much more evidence of that do people need?

NohatCoder• 8 months ago

TL;DR:

Defendants Roy and Rianne Schestowitz were the targets of online harassment. They decided that claimant Matthew Garrett was behind it, and initiated their own hate campaign against him, in particular using their websites www.techrights.org and news.tuxmachines.org to do so.

The defendants did a very poor job of going to court, even by the standards of amateurs representing themselves, producing almost no evidence, none of which the judge found to be relevant.

Damages of £70K were awarded.

stebalien• 8 months ago

For anyone interested, the story is told in the "truth defense" section:

https://caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ewhc/kb/2025/3063#lv...

bawolff4• 8 months ago

That was a wild ride.

Mr Hamer referred to what he considered to be racist attacks on Dr Garrett’s lawyers, posted on Techrights, which he described as probably the worst example he had seen of such conduct.

So these people's response to getting sued was to make racist comments about the person suing them's lawyer?!

Keeping it classy.

fancyfredbot5• 8 months ago

I had never heard of techrights before. It seems to have a lot of angry/nasty articles. There's a huge amount of paranoia and hatred towards big tech. A lot of personal attacks against individuals and his former employer. I find myself questioning whether the authors are entirely sane.

Can anyone confirm whether it is (or was?) really a respectable/serious free software site?

parl_match2• 8 months ago

complicated. sometimes, they do real and solid reporting.

on the other hand, there's a reason multiple tech-focused communities ban their articles

i personally am happy to see this judgement, their attacks on mjg are unhinged and misguided

fancyfredbot5• 8 months ago

Example of real solid reporting?

someone_eu• 8 months ago

It's a QAnon of FOSS.

mjg596• 8 months ago

The final order implementing the judgement isn't out yet so I'm not going to go into too much detail here as yet, but there's additional publicly available information I can share:

The original claim: https://codon.org.uk/~mjg59/case/Claims.pdf

The defence and counterclaim: https://codon.org.uk/~mjg59/case/Defence_Counterclaim.pdf

The associated schedule of harassment: https://codon.org.uk/~mjg59/case/Schedule.pdf

The reply to the defence and counterclaim: https://codon.org.uk/~mjg59/case/Reply.pdf

nikanj• 8 months ago

Do lawsuits ever really end, or do the parties just run out of money? Isn’t the SCO v. Linux thing still shambling on in some court?

mjg596• 8 months ago

Other than reaching agreement over the order to implement the judgement, this is likely over - my understanding is that an appeal could only occur if the judge made an error of law, and they would need to convince another judge of this before being granted permission to appeal.

sevensor• 8 months ago

I think Jarndyce v Jarndyce is still going as well.

mjg596• 8 months ago

One thing that didn't end up happening - the claim that he would have multiple people, including Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman, Bruce Perens, and John Gilmore testify against me.

chris_wot• 8 months ago

I feel for Matthew. Apparently there is an entire chapter about me on an anti-Wikipedia website that advances some quite literally absurd claims. I’ve been aware of it for some time, being simultaneously amused and disturbed by the unhinged nature of both the material and the originator.

If this is how I feel about a discredited and largely uninfluential website, one can only imagine how Matthew feels given how widely read the unhinged claims on tuxmachines were against him.

kragen• 8 months ago

Paragraph 25 describes what this is all about:

Dr Garrett is chiefly accused of an online campaign of material which is (variously) criminal, illegal or offensive. The criminal matters alleged include cybercrime, hate crime, blackmail, issuing threats of violence or death, and matters adjacent to terrorism. Other illegal matters alleged include defamation, harassment and online abuse. Offensive matters alleged include material that is variously racist, antisemitic, misogynist, homophobic or otherwise hateful or discriminatory, sexually incontinent, or drugs-related. Dr Garrett is alleged to have waged this campaign through the medium of IRC ‘sockpuppet’ accounts – accounts under pseudonymous user nicknames intended to be a vehicle for distributing material anonymously and deniably. Many posts from these accounts are reproduced in the articles complained of. Dr Garrett is also repeatedly alleged to be an uncontrolled user of illegal class A drugs, principally crack cocaine.

The evidence for the allegations was apparently very thin (¶¶59–60):

First, the defence relies on an incident a few years prior to the sockpuppet campaign, in which Dr Garrett admittedly registered himself online in two borrowed names for the purpose of making a rhetorical or satirical point about the owner of those names. Dr Garrett’s evidence is that he did so openly, and with the knowledge of the owner (who had himself vacated the names in order to borrow another user’s nickname – which was in part Dr Garrett’s point in also doing so). Dr Schestowitz clearly takes exception to that particular piece of theatricality as a major breach of netiquette in its own right, and regards it as a sign or symptom of propensity for sockpuppetry. But the incident in question, on its face, is plainly something quite different from the covert use of sockpuppet accounts to publish illegal or offensive material, and is not in my judgment capable of indicating any sort of propensity to do that.
Second, it is said there was an incident in which Dr Garrett’s own named account and one of the sockpuppet accounts experienced simultaneous dropped connections. If established, that could indicate dual operation by a single individual. The evidence from the Claimant is that the dropped connections were not in fact simultaneous. I have no evidential basis for doing otherwise than proceeding on that basis. This pleading cannot in the circumstances support an inference of Dr Garrett’s authorship of the sockpuppet posts.

¶¶61–75 have further, even weaker evidence.

bilekas• 8 months ago

Dr Garrett is alleged to have waged this campaign through the medium of IRC ‘sockpuppet’ accounts

And people say IRC is dead!

EvanAnderson• 8 months ago

I don't know anything about the parties involved but I really enjoyed reading the document. A skilled person writing well and offering detailed descriptions of background and process is always attractive to me.

mjg596• 8 months ago

I was extremely impressed with the attention that the judge paid to the entire exercise, and the manner in which she conducted the trial.

rstat1• 8 months ago

Its WILD to me seeing Techrights described as "well-established, respected and trusted"

bigfatkitten2• 8 months ago

I remember Roy Schestowitz from cross-posted flame wars coming out of comp.os.linux.advocacy at least 25 years ago.

He was not a popular figure even back then, for reasons of his own making.

tzs• 8 months ago

Fourth, both websites are well-established. It is conspicuous that each has been active over two decades; that is a significant marker in the field. Dr Garrett’s evidence is that they are serious, sought-after, well-regarded, popular and trusted in the anglophone free software community, including for news, campaigning and educational content. Neither Dr nor Mrs Schestowitz suggested otherwise.

When did techrights.org become well respected and trusted!?

Last time I looked at it a few years ago it was like it had always been. Basically what you'd get if idiots like the QAnon people had directed their attention to free software instead of politics.

Dr Matthew Garrett v Dr Roy Schestowitz and Anor

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