Judgement on Dr Matthew Garrett (@mjg59) vs. Dr Roy Schestowitz (Techrights.org)
14 comments
·November 20, 2025mythz
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.
kasabali
> £70,000 in "damages"
Damn, libel law is ridiculous.
benjojo12
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 pays quite a lot of money in 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
ceejayoz
UK libel law is very friendly to the plaintiff.
jmclnx
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.
jeroenhd
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.
mbreese
> ended up not being convincing enough
From my limited (non-lawyer) reading of this, they didn't actually offer any evidence. I'm not sure if they had any evidence or not. But it appears that they represented themselves and didn't go through the proper procedures for offering evidence or witnesses. So all they could do was cross-examine.
My reading (from just the judgement posted) is that it is a sad thing that it came to a legal dispute at all.
raverbashing
> to convince a fair-minded bystander
Ah yes the Man on the Clapham omnibus ruler
rmoriz
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
rideontime
Imagine me wearing my context hat and context shirt, pointing to my sign that reads "I require context."
TRiG_Ireland
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.
pseudolus
[flagged]
Matthew's side of the story is here: https://mastodon.online/@mjg59@nondeterministic.computer/115...