Free Traffic Legal Advice
General discussion => The Flame Pit => Topic started by: andy_foster on June 14, 2023, 11:24:35 pm
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Sill haven't seen another witness statement detailing how the witness loaded and unloaded the wet film cartridge from a Gatso BV 24+ AUS, and exhibiting a still from a Lastec video. Or casually explaining that the discrepancy was due to the fact that he did write or even read his own statement, and merely signed a large pile of pre-written statements.
Sounds like the Deegan case.
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Sill haven't seen another witness statement detailing how the witness loaded and unloaded the wet film cartridge from a Gatso BV 24+ AUS, and exhibiting a still from a Lastec video. Or casually explaining that the discrepancy was due to the fact that he did write or even read his own statement, and merely signed a large pile of pre-written statements.
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I have just found this post via Google after being unable to find the former forums.
Hopefully my lifetime subscription to that community will still be put to good use.
No doubt, I will be posting on these boards requesting guidance again soon.
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No, it’s pretty universal. Lawyer is used as a catch all term to describe all shades of legal professionals. But still - who cares?
Indeed. My next door neighbour is a "lawyer". She is a solicitor - well qualified and has been practising for years. But she hasn't a clue what a NIP or a s172 request is. She came to me for advice and a view on the likely outcome when her husband received one earlier this year.
"Legal Advice" is not the sole preserve of lawyers (though there is one occasional correspondent on Pepipoo who would love us to believe otherwise! ;D)
I am about to report a barrister for his incompetence and "curvature of the word" and, indeed, attempts to intimidate a client of mine through the stating of complete and utterly vexatious untruth. Yet alone the dysfunctional state of his parking services while on his watch.
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Nobody is infallible.
I'm not sure the JSCs would agree, but none of them have joined our ranks.
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That being said, we have at least two qualified lawyers in our ranks and I am yet to see an instance where someone has been given advice, either here or on pepipoo, which if given by a lawyer could have been described as negligently given.
Well, there was the Maidstone case last year which was rescued by a certain member on pepipoo. The same member, indeed, has rescued two other cases contrary to the general advice of the forum - both reviews.
Nobody is infallible.
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Well fortunately I had the foresight of clarifying my position in my signature below, so that should minimise the scope for confusion.
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No, it’s pretty universal. Lawyer is used as a catch all term to describe all shades of legal professionals. But still - who cares?
Indeed. My next door neighbour is a "lawyer". She is a solicitor - well qualified and has been practising for years. But she hasn't a clue what a NIP or a s172 request is. She came to me for advice and a view on the likely outcome when her husband received one earlier this year.
"Legal Advice" is not the sole preserve of lawyers (though there is one occasional correspondent on Pepipoo who would love us to believe otherwise! ;D)
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People who are not aware of your definitions and do not have your qualifications as implied per my post.
No, it’s pretty universal. Lawyer is used as a catch all term to describe all shades of legal professionals. But still - who cares?
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Finally
I think that there is also a difference of opinion regarding the meaning of the word "finally".
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People who are not aware of your definitions and do not have your qualifications as implied per my post.
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In my experience, “lawyer” is used as a term encompassing all qualified lawyers, e.g. barristers, solicitors and so forth.
Ultimately, who cares?
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Thanks for this.
My comment is as follows: you mean "lawyers" or "solicitors"? My daughter has a Master's Degree in law and she is a solicitor. So, I ask: what kind of lawyer and at what level? The reason I ask is that most people regard "lawyer" as different from "solicitor". Do you mean "barrister", "solicitor advocate" or whatever?
As an aside cp, we are both well aware of a certain lawyer's flawed advice given to one London Borough re bus lane contraventions!
Finally, I know for a fact that "lawyers" do not study parking law as part of their degree - reverting back to my daughter's degrees, whose theses I edited occasionally!
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There has been much discussion about the name of this forum, I'd like to clarify that the name was chosen to be descriptive: the primary thing we do on here is to give legal advice about traffic law. Some members in the past (not any who have mentioned the issue recently) had made misguided posts to the effect that only a lawyer can give legal advice, this is not correct, at least not in the UK.
There are some important qualifications: immigration law advice is a reserved legal activity under the Legal Services Act 2007. Further to that, under the provisions of Part 3B of The Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Regulated Activities) Order 2001 (https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2001/544/part/3B) a whole raft of claims management activities, including legal advice, representation and advocacy are caught by the general prohibition under the FSMA 2000 (https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/8/section/19) (contravention of which is a criminal offence (https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/8/section/23)) and such activities would amount to a criminal offence if carried out without a licence from the Financial Conduct Authority (lawyers, charities, trade unions and a few others are exempt), but that applies only for the following types of claim: a personal injury claim; a financial services or financial product claim; a housing disrepair claim; a claim for a specified benefit; a criminal injury claim; and an employment related claim.
Therefore to seek or obtain payment in respect of any of those causes of action is a criminal offence if one is not a legal practitioner (as defined) or otherwise exempt, even though such activities are not necessarily reserved legal activities under the 2007 Act.
Legal activities that are not caught by the Legal Services Act 2007 or by the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 are a free for all: hence anyone can give advice about traffic law (personal injury law excepted). There is nothing on this website that suggests the advice is being given by qualified lawyers or that we are a law firm.
Advice about what the law is or what its effects are is legal advice, i.e. advice about the law. That's what most of us on here have been doing for years. If this were in any way prohibited, there is no doubt in my mind that some of us would have been sent off in chains to a hard labour camp a long time ago (at least if it were up to certain enforcement authorities).
The website's name was thus chosen, at least in part, to correct the misconception that the legal profession has an absolute monopoly on giving legal advice, it does not.
That being said, we have at least two qualified lawyers in our ranks and I am yet to see an instance where someone has been given advice, either here or on pepipoo, which if given by a lawyer could have been described as negligently given.
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[quote date=Sat, 4 Nov 2023 - 18:00]
Frankly, I am not of the opinion that pepipoo should not be usurped in this manner by the other site. It leads to duplication of effort and, indeed, mix ups as to who is representing whom.
I would also state that pepipoo is, essentially, a forum which acts in a collegiate manner; but, sadly, it appears to me that this is no longer the case.
[/quote]
Andy, this is yet another perfect example of conflation. :o
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New posters are confused - two websites to check PMs etc. This resulted in a confusion of who is representing whom.
@Hippocrates both the TPT and LT now required a signed letter of authority, and I've always taken the position that until I have a signed LoA, I won't do anything for anyone because I am not instructed. If we all stick to that approach, there is no risk of any duplication, assuming no OP is going to sign LoAs for two people at the same time.
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Certainly for the area i have an interest and limited expertise in (civil parking/ moving traffic this site is now doing the better work, I find it no easier to use than pepipoo but no harder either
What is happening now more than it did some years ago is people representing user through to tribunal, this is fine and i have taken on some cases myself but what is detrimental to the greater community is that once a case is taken discussion on the way forward ceases We see the outcomes but do not always see the arguments put forward perhaps this could change
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Noted. As I said in the pub, I do not wish to get involved re the personality issues. Re 4 above, I do not agree.
I will let others do what they want to do behind the scenes.
Pepipoo is a wealth of information.
New posters are confused - two websites to check PMs etc. This resulted in a confusion of who is representing whom.
Some would say this is a one-man-band show, to coin a new phrase. Nobody doubts your expertise, cp, and I have expressed my admiration in no uncertain terms, both personally, in writing and on the phone.
I guess that we all appear to be arrogant, myself included, when sitting behind a computer etc.
I am not happy that pepipoo has not yet been given the chance to resolve its issues and that is all. There are several members on pepipoo who are justly aggrieved about the manner of this transference to this site. They can speak for themselves.
Thanks for your whats app message which will remain private.
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Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but for what it's worth:
1) Pepipoo is buggy as hell. My primary issue with pepipoo is that if you go through unread threads in reverse date order, it will randomly mark a bunch of read threads as unread, so you have no idea how far you've got. There are workarounds, like opening every unread thread in a new tab, but that is hardly a practical solution. Other issues are that it often becomes randomly unresponsive, it limits the number of PMs that can be sent, it's horrendously insecure (basically anyone with basic hacking skills could break it and do whatever they want), and the media consistently refuse to mention it for somewhat obvious reasons.
2) We've got a pretty good thing going here: we have all sorts of nice features like the embedded youtube functionality, we can tweak the admin settings, and moderation activity is shared amongst a number of competent people. For instance when people post broken links, or try and fail to embed images into a post or whatever else (which happens a lot), there's a number of people who can simply fix that. On pepipoo, we'd be reliant on southpaw fixing everything for everyone, which is unrealistic.
3) Ultimately this site is maintained, the old one isn't. There are no admins around on pepipoo, and even when there were around they didn't exactly do much. During the last couple of outages, there was complete radio silence which has not ended. By contrast when we had a DNS issue on here (did anyone even notice?), I was able to get it fixed within 30 minutes and we were back online.
4) Unless something changes, we all agree pepipoo will fall over eventually.
Now, when we had no alternative I had to put up with all the issues at point 1 as there was no alternative. Now that we have an alternative that is technically and functionally better, I see no reason to give advice to people on a website that is creaking along while we wait for the wheels to come off.
I understand some people have a very strong emotional attachment to pepipoo, but ultimately our mission is to provide free and impartial legal advice to members of the public who are in need of such advice in areas of law where seeking paid legal advice is simply unviable, as Parliament has decided that legal aid should not be available and the commercial market is unable to provide such advice at affordable rates. The website to be used for such purposes is simply a means to an end, I think it is somewhat misguided to lose sight of the end and focus so much on the means.
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[quote name='Schofeldt' date='Sat, 4 Nov 2023 - 18:00' post='1797530']
Frankly, I am not of the opinion that pepipoo should not be usurped in this manner by the other site. It leads to duplication of effort and, indeed, mix ups as to who is representing whom.
I would also state that pepipoo is, essentially, a forum which acts in a collegiate manner; but, sadly, it appears to me that this is no longer the case.
[/quote]
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I am not at all happy with this situation.
What situation?
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I am not at all happy with this situation.
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The police will get a Court Order and serve that Order on whoever is named as the owner of this site.
Great. I’m not in the UK, so I have no obligation to comply with an order issued by a UK court.
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And how will the UK police demand anything from me?
The user's IP address is logged here by the forum software (bottom right of the user's post).
The police will get a Court Order...
From what court?
And under what powers would such an order be granted?
and serve that Order on whoever is named as the owner of this site.
Named by whom? Are you talking about the owner of the domain, or the owner of the hosting platform? Please bear in mind that neither are in England and Wales, so it might be difficult to effect service and it would be even more difficult for an English court to have jurisdiction over either party in the first place.
Your entire premise therefore seems to fall flat on its face, not for the first time I hasten to add.
Just out of curiosity, have you even been to court or conducted legal proceedings? You're talking an awful lot about what the police and the courts will and won't do, but the fact that you've skimming over the obvious practical problems the courts and the police would encounter suggest you have no real experience of any of this.
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And how will the UK police demand anything from me?
The user's IP address is logged here by the forum software (bottom right of the user's post).
The police will get a Court Order and serve that Order on whoever is named as the owner of this site.
When the site owner hands the IP address over, the police will then serve a Court Order on the ISP who owns that IP address.
At that point, the name and address of whoever the account relates to is disclosed. Note that the person who pays the bill might not be the person who has been posting nasty words.
It's a long shot to get the Police to jump through such hoops but it does happen occasionally.
It's not usually the Police who get involved in these types of things, it's agencies higher up the chain (so you have to have been downloading copious amounts of illegal material or posting that you're planning on blowing up the Government before you draw attention to yourself).
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Well depending on how desperate the aggrieved party are to acquire the information from the admin/host whatever running the website they can apply for a Norwich Pharmacal order.
This provides, if granted by the courts, for a party caught up though no fault of their own to supply information about an individual which was unobtainable by other means.
An example might be if a bank transfer had been incorrectly made and the aggrieved party wanted to obtain the details of the person to whom the transfer had actually gone they would apply for the order requiring the receiving bank to divulge the information of their customer who wrongfully received the money.
More interesting/relevant is the case of Applause Store Productions Ltd Vs Raphael where the Norwich Pharmacal order was granted forcing Facebook to supply the registrants details, email address and IP addresses
See
https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/QB/2008/1781.html
Or an order granted against Google forcing it to supply the required identifying IP address etc details of the persons unknown who was posting defamatory emails in Lockton Companies international Ltd vs persons unknown and Google in 2009.
You do know what I do for a living, right?
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Well depending on how desperate the aggrieved party are to acquire the information from the admin/host whatever running the website they can apply for a Norwich Pharmacal order.
Of course that requires there to be a defendant who is subject to the jurisdiction of the courts of England & Wales, upon whom such an order could even be served.
It's also a civil law remedy, it's not something the police would bother with.
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Well depending on how desperate the aggrieved party are to acquire the information from the admin/host whatever running the website they can apply for a Norwich Pharmacal order.
This provides, if granted by the courts, for a party caught up though no fault of their own to supply information about an individual which was unobtainable by other means.
An example might be if a bank transfer had been incorrectly made and the aggrieved party wanted to obtain the details of the person to whom the transfer had actually gone they would apply for the order requiring the receiving bank to divulge the information of their customer who wrongfully received the money.
More interesting/relevant is the case of Applause Store Productions Ltd Vs Raphael where the Norwich Pharmacal order was granted forcing Facebook to supply the registrants details, email address and IP addresses
See
https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/QB/2008/1781.html
Or an order granted against Google forcing it to supply the required identifying IP address etc details of the persons unknown who was posting defamatory emails in Lockton Companies international Ltd vs persons unknown and Google in 2009.
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They know the IP address from "demanding" it of the website/forum hosting/admin.
No, they really don't. Lots of people seem to be making this assumption but this is where the argument falls flat on its face, nobody is going to give anyone any IP addresses simply because someone "demands" it.
This being the case, the rest of your argument simply falls flat on its face.
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however if the police really want to....
They know the IP address from "demanding" it of the website/forum hosting/admin.
And how will the UK police demand anything from me?
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In the UK blocks of IP addresses are issued for use to certain ISP's
This is all public knowledge
So I can go on to some website and it will tell me that my IP is XXXXX and hence it also knows the ISP I'm connected through, as the IP address is within a block issued to ISP BB.
At this point all the public websites get it wrong on my approx location as geo-location from and IP address in the UK is next to impossible in public.
however if the police really want to....
They know the IP address from "demanding" it of the website/forum hosting/admin.
So now they know the ISP.
The police would go to the ISP and "suggest" that they might like to supply the home address of the connection that was connected to the particular IP address in question at the relevant time. All UK ISP's are required to keep such logs for 1 year.
They then go to the property and equally "suggest" to the owner/resident that they might like to cooperate on who was using the connection at the time. alternatively all computers and phone will be seized for forensics investigation if they want to be difficult.
Now some ISP use CGNAT (lots of phone based internet connections) which is where a single IP address is shared out among multiple users at the same time where the switching between users as the user "uses" the connection is done so fast that it invisible to users. This does make things more difficult to nail down which is the exact connection needed at the instant of time.
Obviously it gets even more complex where you have VPN's......
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I was thinking along the lines of your keyboard warrior who gets his/her internet access via, say, Virgin Media, a UK outfit.
But how would plod know a user's ISP in the first place?
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Plod can obtain the name associated with the account tied to the IP address at the time the words were posted via a warrant as you rightly surmise.
They can only get an IP address if the US authorities cooperate, which is a high bar.
I was thinking along the lines of your keyboard warrior who gets his/her internet access via, say, Virgin Media, a UK outfit.
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Well, at the age of ca. twice cp's, my reputation(s) precede me so I have abandoned caring anymore. People try it on with me as per the other day when I was told I could not film outside a Town Hall. I simply replied it was a public place and could film a policeman indulged in any action if I wanted to or words to that effect. Molon lave.
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Plod can obtain the name associated with the account tied to the IP address at the time the words were posted via a warrant as you rightly surmise.
They can only get an IP address if the US authorities cooperate, which is a high bar.
Just because cp8759 pays the bill for his/her internet access, it doesn't mean he/she posted the bad words.
To be honest, I'm a public figure and if plod wants to have a word, I'm easy to find.
As we don't allow anything dishonest or illegal on this forum, I'm really not fussed.
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What is a police force going to do with an IP address? As I understand it they would need a warrant to obtain the subscriber's details from an ISP, they can't just call up Vodafone or BT and get a name and address.
Plod can obtain the name associated with the account tied to the IP address at the time the words were posted via a warrant as you rightly surmise.
But here's the thing. Just because cp8759 pays the bill for his/her internet access, it doesn't mean he/she posted the bad words. He/she simply says, there are x people in my house using my internet, it wasn't me. And Plod have to go away with their tails between their legs.
Equally, and here's a real world example, I allow my internet to be accessed by my neighbour via wifi (I've given her the SSID and password) - she's on her own, works hard but has next to no money and can't afford her own internet access.
What she does with it is down to her (I've told her no video streaming during the day when I need my internet for work).....but other than that, if she posts on Twitter that she wants to nuke the UK Government and the trail comes back to me, I'll tell Plod to go forth and multiply, not my problem.
And all of that is before you get into VPN usage.
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Anyway, ultimately it's your choice. I think it is unwise to rely on a one man band in Illinois but you're right in that comparing it to the old forums this is still better. If you'd like assistance setting it up on your own hosting the offer is still there, takes all of 15 minutes to do and IMO will futureproof the site a lot better.
In order to allow FTLA to be hosted in a manner that is wholly fault tolerant in-house, shall we say - i.e. the use of multiple hosting providers as well as somehow securing the right for multiple people to have access to take control of a domain if needs be, this would take far longer than 15 minutes.
As someone who does this professionally, it isn't yet worth it for something like FTLA - I would reckon that what we have here is definitely effective for the moment.
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I have not read all of this thread but will be very sorry to see pepipoo go. I am not interested in any alleged machinations on the part of some members who have privately expressed them to me. I am here simply to fight tickets and can only say: Viva pepipoo.
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You're forgetting how much more manpower the police put into prosecuting motorists then drug dealers.
Anyway, ultimately it's your choice. I think it is unwise to rely on a one man band in Illinois but you're right in that comparing it to the old forums this is still better. If you'd like assistance setting it up on your own hosting the offer is still there, takes all of 15 minutes to do and IMO will futureproof the site a lot better.
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To be honest I'm a bit surprised at your cavalier approach to user data but if you aren't concerned about having no control over website security or data then the current solution should be fine. I would definitely recommend speaking to anyone who was around when it because clear the police are/were scraping data from Pepipoo en masse to see if allowing even easier access this time is a good idea.
Maybe users won't mind posting knowing police forces are analysing every post on the site.
Scraping data from a public website is something anyone can do anyway, and has nothing to do with security?
I don't know what you mean by even easier access, to the extent that any security is required, I'm sure this website has better security than pepipoo.
It was either you or someone else who pointed out that with modern techniques, it would be child's play for anyone with the right skills to get anyone's pepipoo password (including presumably Fredd's password) and have a look at whatever they wanted.
To get IP addresses UK police forces would need to launch an international investigation in partnership with US authorities, which makes zero sense for anything but the most serious of crimes. If we were talking about murder, people smuggling, importing machine guns or terrorism then sure, they'd get warrants in the US in no time. For minor traffic offences, not so much.
I'm sure you could come up with some super-duper security solutions that could make this website an impenetrable vault, but it seems to me that you've got a solution looking for a problem.
And frankly I think the idea that the police sit around all day trawling forums like this one is for the birds, after all there's people who openly advertise drugs for sale on facebook or gumtree and nothing seems to get done about that.
As far as I recall, the one guy who got sent to prison was the one who bragged about perverting the course of justice on the forum, and it was a forum member who actually reported him to the police.
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What is a police force going to do with an IP address? As I understand it they would need a warrant to obtain the subscriber's details from an ISP, they can't just call up Vodafone or BT and get a name and address.
And not being funny but even if the police identified an OP from an IP address, so what? If an OP comes here and we identify a defence worth running (faulty TRO, signs not giving adequate guidance, 1st NIP posted on day 15 or whatever else) there is nothing the police could find on here that would help them. At most, they'd realise there isn't a reasonable prospect of conviction and they'd just let it go.
If we identify that there is no defence worth running, the OP is no worse off than before (after all as far as the police are concerned they had enough evidence to get a conviction all along).
CaF uses the ad revenue to pay for hosting the site, which effectively costs nothing at all to run (aside from a nominal yearly fee for the domain and SSL functionality).
We could pay a monthly fee to remove the CaF ads and then put our own ads up to generate ad revenue to pay the fees, but it seems like a lot of faffing about for no real benefit.
It's very easy to Geolocate an IP address sufficiently to link it to an existing case.
To be honest I'm a bit surprised at your cavalier approach to user data but if you aren't concerned about having no control over website security or data then the current solution should be fine. I would definitely recommend speaking to anyone who was around when it because clear the police are/were scraping data from Pepipoo en masse to see if allowing even easier access this time is a good idea.
Maybe users won't mind posting knowing police forces are analysing every post on the site.
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Well, people are asking for legal advice with their IP address. IP address is personal data under GDPR and bearing in mind police forces used to scrape the old Pepipoo (hence using images for police forces) no doubt they will eventually do the same here.
There's a reason why if you are taking legal advice from a solicitor you don't send an anonymous transcript of the conversation to the police to see if they can match it up with an existing case.
But if you think the data on this site has no value either to the admins or anyone else, whether it be the police or someone trying to make money that is your decision. CaF obviously see value in the data which is why they monetise the links.
I'd argue that a lot of things on this forum are "slam dunks", i.e. even if the opposing party knows of it, there's nothing they can do as they've already buggered it up. What cp said.
Third parties cannot see IPs of users, so unless there's a data leak (which is *more likely* on PPP, rather than here), or the police request data from the site owners (which, being run by an off shore company, on servers in the USA, would probably be an impressive undertaking for otherwise minor traffic offences), then no one is seeing them...
What data may identify users, is data that has been posted on PPP for many years. Offence dates and times, copies of NIPs and location of offence, etc. Private parking companies and councils are also at it. That's data that you can't leave out of a post, because you need it to provide advice.
"CaF see value in the data" - bollocks. Monetising text or links is not a new concept, and not isolated to the data posted on this forum. There is almost certainly no human interaction, or any consideration (by the algorithm) of what the data on this forum actually is... (i'd be interested if it monetised the word bollocks).
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What is a police force going to do with an IP address? As I understand it they would need a warrant to obtain the subscriber's details from an ISP, they can't just call up Vodafone or BT and get a name and address.
And not being funny but even if the police identified an OP from an IP address, so what? If an OP comes here and we identify a defence worth running (faulty TRO, signs not giving adequate guidance, 1st NIP posted on day 15 or whatever else) there is nothing the police could find on here that would help them. At most, they'd realise there isn't a reasonable prospect of conviction and they'd just let it go.
If we identify that there is no defence worth running, the OP is no worse off than before (after all as far as the police are concerned they had enough evidence to get a conviction all along).
CaF uses the ad revenue to pay for hosting the site, which effectively costs nothing at all to run (aside from a nominal yearly fee for the domain and SSL functionality).
We could pay a monthly fee to remove the CaF ads and then put our own ads up to generate ad revenue to pay the fees, but it seems like a lot of faffing about for no real benefit.
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What "secure" data is held on this public forum exactly?
Well, people are asking for legal advice with their IP address. IP address is personal data under GDPR and bearing in mind police forces used to scrape the old Pepipoo (hence using images for police forces) no doubt they will eventually do the same here.
There's a reason why if you are taking legal advice from a solicitor you don't send an anonymous transcript of the conversation to the police to see if they can match it up with an existing case.
But if you think the data on this site has no value either to the admins or anyone else, whether it be the police or someone trying to make money that is your decision. CaF obviously see value in the data which is why they monetise the links.
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So we had our first "incident" today, and were offline for a bit.
I raised a support ticket and we were back online within 43 minutes: https://support.createaforum.com/8/domain-not-working/new/?topicseen#new
Compared to the pepipoo hosting provider that previously didn't respond to Fredd for days at a time, I think that's a definite improvement.
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What "secure" data is held on this public forum exactly?
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If you are hosting the site, you have control over its security.
If you are not hosting the site, you have no control over its security.
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Thank you for the new beginning. I gather that the problems with PPP started a few weeks ago; shows you how often I pop in! I will try to improve. ;)
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Hosting is cheap, and if the forum was hosted by FTLA then there would be no need to rely on one company. Multiple people could receive daily/weekly backups. You can also control what forum software you want to use and upgrade as and when for security or aesthetic reasons rather than being reliant on the current host
Whilst i'm all for self hosting stuff for control of the data, YOU are then responsible for the security of that service.
From managing many SMF/phpBB instances in the past, that is not an easy undertaking. Plus if you host on your own VPS, you need to ensure the security of that too. The benefit of using a service like CreateaForum is that they will manage that, so everyone else can get on with providing a useful service to everyone else.
Plus, it appears that if you fancy donating some money, you can buy perks for this forum direct from Createaforum (see the link in the footer), so in a way, supporting it.
The SSL certificate is a free Let's Encrypt one so if you paid for that you've been ripped off.
If it's been paid for, then they have probably paid for the service to apply it to their account. There was always historically a cost for having an SSL cert applied to a hosting account, in addition to the certificate itself.
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tl;dr Data is valuable, and the current setup means we are locked into the current provider who may or may not continue to provide access on the same terms in future.
I still don't know what "valuable" data you're talking about, see the comment by sparx above.
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Actually as both the domain name and the SSL certificate have been paid for, there's a contractual relationship that is just as enforceable as the contractual relationship with any other hosting provider (you know, consideration, acceptance and all of that).
The domain name has been purchased from GoDaddy. From their website CaF don't sell domain names so presumably it was purchased seperately.
The SSL certificate is a free Let's Encrypt one so if you paid for that you've been ripped off.
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This site is still in its early days. I’m happy to receive constructive advice and help. Frankly, I don’t understand much of what you’ve said (though I’ve also not taken any time to research it) - but if you can articulate a ‘better way’ in simple terms I’ll listen.
On a normal forum you have control of the database and so if you need to move to a new host, new software or whatever you are able to do this.
With this setup, someone else controls the data which means it is practically very difficult if the host decides to stop offering the service, close the forum, even start charging high fees, because you need to pay them for the data of all the users, posts etc and very likely even if you did it's not going to be in a useful format you can use to move the forum somewhere else.
Additionally, at the moment CreateaForum are monetising all the links which means they are getting revenue which could instead go towards paying for the site costs.
Certainly CreateaForum could be a great company who will host the site without issue. But if they turn out not to be or just want to close the business, or someone takes it over with the aim to charge the existing client base then very likely the forum will need to start from scratch again or pay whatever they ask.
Hosting is cheap, and if the forum was hosted by FTLA then there would be no need to rely on one company. Multiple people could receive daily/weekly backups. You can also control what forum software you want to use and upgrade as and when for security or aesthetic reasons rather than being reliant on the current host.
tl;dr Data is valuable, and the current setup means we are locked into the current provider who may or may not continue to provide access on the same terms in future.
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I'm also not quite sure why everyone is so obsessed with the database, the database of old posts isn't really worth much as most become outdated within a few weeks to a few months at most. The real value in the forum is the people it brings together and their collective knowledge.
Not only that, but the internet archive has archived a lot of it. Granted, it won't be easy to just "browse", but if pertinent information is later required to be found again, it's probably on there.
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1st amendment is freedom of religion. Nothing to do with an online forum.
You are very seriously misinformed, you might have found https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution but you need to scoll past "Freedom of religion" and read "Freedom of speech and of the press" and the rest of the page. There are some exceptions such as "fighting words" but everything that would be acceptable to us would be protected speech within the meaning of the US constitution, so there's little to no chance of the site being taken offline by the hosting provider. It's actually a fascinating area of law if you look into it.
But even if the hosting provider wants to shut down the site, the offshore company owns the domain name so we can easily re-point the domian somewhere else.
The privacy policy is currently up to the host CreateaForum. They are hosting it for free, they decide who has access to the data.
Actually as both the domain name and the SSL certificate have been paid for, there's a contractual relationship that is just as enforceable as the contractual relationship with any other hosting provider (you know, consideration, acceptance and all of that).
Pepipoo heads down the same path as the old forums, if the owner gets hit by a bus/goes AWOL then the forum becomes a zombie forum.
Surely that would be true no matter what the hosting solution is?
I'm also not quite sure why everyone is so obsessed with the database, the database of old posts isn't really worth much as most become outdated within a few weeks to a few months at most. The real value in the forum is the people it brings together and their collective knowledge.
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If you must "correct" someone and call them thick, in public, I would strongly suggest getting your facts straight first.
The First Amendemnt is *not* confined to religious freedom, it covers religion, freedom of speech, free press, assembly, and the right to **** to he government.
Or to put it another way, I don't know whether you are being deliberately unintelligent, or whether it just comes naturally.
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I don't know if you're being deliberately unintelligent.
For a start, don’t gob off at admins. Hard no.
1st amendment is freedom of religion. Nothing to do with an online forum.
The First Amendment (as an aside, I’ve seen the original, which is bigger that I imagined it would be):
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Clearly, it covers more than freedom of religion. In terms of online forums, it generally means that the government (of various stripes in America) won’t grant warrants against a forum because of what was said, unless it infringes the First Amendment (which is difficult).
This site is still in its early days. I’m happy to receive constructive advice and help. Frankly, I don’t understand much of what you’ve said (though I’ve also not taken any time to research it) - but if you can articulate a ‘better way’ in simple terms I’ll listen.
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I don't know if you're being deliberately unintelligent.
1st amendment is freedom of religion. Nothing to do with an online forum.
The privacy policy is currently up to the host CreateaForum. They are hosting it for free, they decide who has access to the data.
If you are paying for hosting you make regular backups of the database and move the database to a different provider if needed. With CreateaForum you pay $50 per backup with no guarantee the data is usable seeing as they use their own custom software.
https://support.createaforum.com/8/export-content/
Pepipoo heads down the same path as the old forums, if the owner gets hit by a bus/goes AWOL then the forum becomes a zombie forum.
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No idea what 1st amendment has to do with anything unless we're running a church.
It means that any requests to shut down / delete the forum due to someone finding it objectionable for whatever reason are likely to be ignored.
Their privacy policy...
You mean our privacy policy? It's the privacy policy of the offshore company that southpaw has set up to own the site, we just haven't got round to amending it yet. We're not going to be disclosing anything to anyone unless compelled to by a court order, which would require the order to be served on an offshore entity, which is likely to be more hassle than it's worth for most people who might seek disclosure.
I'm sure southpaw and I will get round to updating it at some point.
I would say the relatively little extra work to create a self hosted forum...
What's to stop a hosting provider equally deciding they don't want to host the site? At the end of the day unless we want to set up our own proprietary data centre, we're relying on a hosting provider of some sort or another.
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The site is hosted in the US, so it is protected by the first amendment (which is broader than Article 10 of the ECHR) and any letters from a UK police force are likely to end up in the bin.
That being said, things are being put in place via an offshore limited company.
No idea what 1st amendment has to do with anything unless we're running a church.
Their privacy policy allows them to disclose anything they want. Maybe they would ignore any requests but to me it seems a bit short sighted to avoid a third party with no interest in the site controlling the data and potentially disclosing or even deleting it for any reason.
We will disclose any information about you to government or law enforcement officials or private parties as we, in our sole discretion, believe necessary or appropriate to respond to claims and legal process (such as subpoena requests), to protect our property and rights or the property and rights of a third party, to protect the safety of the public or any person, or to prevent or stop activity we consider to be illegal or unethical.
I would say the relatively little extra work to create a self hosted forum would quite likely be worth it in the medium term and happy to help (used to work as a web developer) if there is interest. It should also be possible to get all the content from the old forum into a new one if it's self hosted so keep accumulated knowledge.
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As a Pepipoo member since 2006 it's going to be a sad day when it does finally disapear. I wouldn't be too concerned with the loss of the old posts. The majority of it will be out of date anyway apart from the case law.
Unless the pepipoo.com domain can be transferred, or pepitec.co.uk can be renewed, then both will go offline 30 days after the expiry of the pepitec.co.uk domain name (some time around November) as the nameservers will fail to resolve.
pepipoo.com is registered until 2027. So in theory, if the pepitec.co.uk domain is able to be re-registered by someone else, then pepipoo.com can be pointed to anywhere that the owner of pepitec.co.uk decides by simply returning different DNS records. This is only an option after full expiry, which will mean pepipoo.com will be offline for 65+ days.
I'm guessing i'm not the only one here that will try to nab pepitec.co.uk when it expires, and if I do, i'll let you guys here know.
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Not saying it's not a good idea but I would think about ways that someone - probably a limited company - can own the site and control the data now. Better than having some spotty teenager in 'Murica be able to decide to delete the site because they received a scary letter on police letterhead.
The site is hosted in the US, so it is protected by the first amendment (which is broader than Article 10 of the ECHR) and any letters from a UK police force are likely to end up in the bin.
That being said, things are being put in place via an offshore limited company.
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Whilst the old site was out of date and highly insecure, I do think if people want a relaunched Pepipoo then it would be good to get it properly hosted rather than on a "free forum" type site where exporting the data will be equally difficult if/when the "free" company folds or decides to start charging fees.
Additionally, any ad revenue can go back into the running of the site.
Not saying it's not a good idea but I would think about ways that someone - probably a limited company - can own the site and control the data now. Better than having some spotty teenager in 'Murica be able to decide to delete the site because they received a scary letter on police letterhead.
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As a Pepipoo member since 2006 it's going to be a sad day when it does finally disapear. I wouldn't be too concerned with the loss of the old posts. The majority of it will be out of date anyway apart from the case law.
All the relevant case law we would ever want to cite is on the PCN spreadsheet, at least as far as council PCNs go.
Maybe one day someone will build an equivalent documents for private parking tickets & criminal cases.
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As a Pepipoo member since 2006 it's going to be a sad day when it does finally disapear. I wouldn't be too concerned with the loss of the old posts. The majority of it will be out of date anyway apart from the case law.
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So I take it both sites will be used for now?
I'm going to use encourage people to migrate to the new site as much as possible. Anything on the old site is potentially liable to just disappear.
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So I take it both sites will be used for now?
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Very well done to those involved in getting this site off the ground.
I was a little panicked last week as I may have a bus lane enforcement impending but sheer bad luck and poor observation perhaps.
However, probably best for me to wait for notification but at the moment I am on holiday so might not know until it's too late if something has dropped on the mat!
To lose PPP entirely, as archive or otherwise, would be an absolute tragedy. It is a good reference for all the fantastic advice that has been dispensed over the years by a core group of selfless and, mostly, patient individuals (iro of my sometimes idiotic questions and misapprehensions).
I've taken this opportunity to change my Username to avoid any embarrassing myself... ::)
I should have used the Old English Hrōðgār.
Keep up the great work, Southpaw82, Incandescent, Nosferatu et al.
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I would now be very wary of copying reams of stuff across from the Pepipoo site until an expert gives a view on the copyright implications.
I don't think Pepiptec Ltd owns the stuff that you and I have posted?
I'm not sure there is much if anything that is owned by Pepitec that we would want to copy. Adjudicator's decisions are Crown Copyright, and posts are either in the public domain, or are owned by those who wrote them in the first place.
If any of your posts are copied onto here, I hope you're not planning on suing us?
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In all fairness to the owners of PPP, they’ve done a sterling service over the years and have facilitated probably tens if not hundreds of thousands of people to get help. I’m sure that something significant must have happened for PPP to be apparently abandoned.
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I would now be very wary of copying reams of stuff across from the Pepipoo site until an expert gives a view on the copyright implications.
Pretty poor show not to have some indication of what the problem was and whether it would be fixed.
Leaving the Mods in the dark is an appalling lack of judgement.
Perhaps the "experts" do need to jump ship to teach them a lesson.
Mike
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I see no reason to shut this one down, it has far more modern forum software (pepipoo is basically abandonware) and if nobody is looking after pepipoo, it will eventually go offline. I note the accounts for pepited ltd are overdue so the company will eventually get struck off if the owners are no longer around to look after it.
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As if traffic signs weren't confusing enough, we now have 2 forums. Which one do we follow? Will they both continue?
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AIUI, most of the outages have been due to issues with the hosting company's data centre - so other than getting updates the Admins were simply passengers.
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I've just seen the old site is up and running again this morning. No explanation from admin as to why. Maybe just a glitch that happens on computerised stuff? Not to worry, I'll stay on both sites, it'll give me something else to do during retirement.
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Pepipoo - http://forums.pepipoo.com/index.php?act=idx
back up and working this morning.
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+1 in thanking those that have set this up!
Also to echo b789 above - more than happy to assist with a tech/migration POV should the old site ever become avaliable/online again. Several things bugged me about that however previous emails sent out never had any luck getting hold of anyone!
I'll go back to providing my usual inpractical on the speeding forum as soon as we get some posts back....
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It would be nice if someone could be able to "own" the pepipoo domain such that a redirect page to here could be set up for people wondering where it's gone.
Good to see, though, that already there are 11 new threads on the Council Tickets forum.
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If you can find out who does have access to the old pepipoo server, I can arrange for domain transfer to any other server. More than happy to assist in getting this new pepipoo set up. If you want more details of what can be done with better forum software, have a look at PePiPoo.uk (https://pepipoo.uk) and feel free to PM me.
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This site is effectively the "spiritual successor" to PePiPoo. Whilst Southpaw was the moderator of PePiPoo, he was not an Admin, and nobody involved in the running of this site has Admin access to PePiPoo.
Whilst PePiPoo is down (which may or may not be temporary), much of the content can be accessed either through Google's cache or the Wayback Machine.
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So far as I know, the site ‘fell over’ rather than being ‘pushed’. There are copies of stuff on the way back machine.
Can someone post a link to where the old stuff can be found?
Also, were all old registrations migrated to this new site?
Try the link in this thread (https://ftla.createaforum.com/civil-penalty-charge-notices-(councils-tfl-and-so-on)/outstanding-threads-from-pepipoo/). No, old registrations were not migrated (and I do not know if they can be).
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So Pepipoo is no more and definitely not coming back?
Unknown but as the problem has persisted for some time now and I’m not an admin I can’t fix it.
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As far as I can tell, the domain name remains registered and paid for up until 2027.
Maybe a basic page could be re-hosted somewhere on the same URL, with a notice explaining the whereabouts of this site, in order to assist those unable to find it.
WHOIS Pepipoo details (https://who.is/whois/pepipoo.com)
Similarly, the Pepipoo Twitter account (https://twitter.com/pepipoo_com) still seems to be nominally active, so maybe a message there too in order to help those searching for Pepipoo information on that platform.
Good luck with this site.
Bill
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So far as I know, the site ‘fell over’ rather than being ‘pushed’. There are copies of stuff on the way back machine.
Can someone post a link to where the old stuff can be found?
Also, were all old registrations migrated to this new site?
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So Pepipoo is no more and definitely not coming back?
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What a relief!
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So far as I know, the site ‘fell over’ rather than being ‘pushed’. There are copies of stuff on the way back machine.
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Thank goodness for the new site! I was a bit concerned when the pepipoo site became "unavailable" a couple of days ago without warning. Luckily a quick visit to MSE found the link to here, so, here I am! Was there any copy of all the items on the old site? There was an awful lot of useful information and case history on there. It would be a great shame if all that was lost to the internet. what I was more worried about was that the site had been shut down by "the feds" for the information given. Maybe we were costing the PPCs and councils too much in lost revenue and outing them for what they are?
It's a pity there's not a link that can be put on search engines that will divert enquiries to the old site to here.
Anyway, I'm here, can sometimes give useful advice on bus-taxi-and railway related items.
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To the Admins.
Firstly, congratulations on doing something about the state of repair of the old site by setting up a fresh one with active Admins.
The old site did a lot of things right, but grew organically and some decisions could have perhaps have been improved on if the Admins had the benefit of the hindsight that you now have.
Where the old site ended is perhaps not a bad place to start, but this is an opportunity to improve and refine.
The principle driver of the non-core subforums of the old site was to divert noise away from the core speeding forum. It was a "speeding and other criminal motoring offences" only forum, but people inisisted on asking for advice on other motoring legal matters (similarly to what you may have seen on a certain council parking tickets only facebook group).
My first suggestion would be to remove the apparent invitation to "have an argument" in the Flame Pit. As above the rationale behind the heading was that the Admins just wanted "noise" posted elsewhere than the speeding forum, but having seen the old site's most prolific sad troll use that phrase to justify his persistent trolling re-enforced my original objections.
My second is that if you want to link from a simpler/more memorable URL, ftla.uk is available.
My third and more general suggestion is that this is your sandbox. Take inspiration from what worked on the old site, but take the opportunity to apply the lessons that have been learned.
God speed (and bring back Boris!)
P.S. Spellcheck appears to default to Merkin.