Is this criminal?

[r8j]

What is the name of your state? VA

Hi,

I was made an admin on a small forum (not a business or anything profit related, other than a site for friends to hang out and post basically). It only has about 20 members from over a 6 month period of time, with only about 20-30 threads.

I accidentally deleted posts/threads by accident by selecting "Select All" and there was/is no way to recover them.

The "owner" aka. ex friend now, is upset and threatening to seek "criminal" action for this.

is that possible? I don't feel anything "criminal" occurred? It is not like I hacked the site or anything of the sort, I was made Admin & given permissions...

Lesson learned, stay a regular user.

But, is it criminal? I could se eif maybe it was a business or revenue is affected, but.. when it's just a "social" gathering for people known in real life...

 

[hrs8o5]

It is not criminal...business, small forum., or self. You're protected from your inept ex-friend: The 1st amendment. Actually, take that ex friend, the whole forum and/or attys they may be dumb enough to pay for, to court on small claims and sue for defamation of character. You'll win!!!!

 

[Ohiogal]

It is not criminal...business, small forum., or self. You're protected from your inept ex-friend: The 1st amendment. Actually, take that ex friend, the whole forum and/or attys they may be dumb enough to pay for, to court on small claims and sue for defamation of character. You'll win!!!!

Really? And you think this because of what? Defamation of character is not present in what he said here.

 

[justalayman]

But, is it criminal? I could se eif maybe it was a business or revenue is affected, but.. when it's just a "social" gathering for people known in real life...

criminal? can't see anything criminal in the situation. IF anything, it would be a civil action which would be based on lost revenue generally. In the situation you have laid out, there appears to be no such issue so I would doubt the owner has any legal claims against you.

Doesn;t mean he cannot hire attorneys and file a suit, just means I do not believe he would be successful in such an action.


Curious though; you say it is not recoverable. Have you spoken with the hosting server? There are often methods of recovering information in such situations that only the host server would have available. You mau have deleted the threads but they may still be available on the server. It is similar to deleting info from your hard drive. When you delete, you do not actually delete anything. All your computer does is mark the sectors that contain the info you want to delete with "available for storage use" again and write over that unwanted info when needed.