Forums & social media getting you barred from casino's?

With the UK's terrible libel laws, you can say something on facebook or twitter that is 100% factual and accurate and still be sued for libel

Speaking as someone who's been libelled in a newspaper I'd massively disagree with this. You have no idea how long it took to get resolved and apologised to.

To say "We couldn't give a shit" is an understatement.

What I said was 100% accurate. If the person who is offended by the statement has a lot of money, they can make life very difficult for the person they are claiming has made the libellous statement.

The problem in your case (and I have no idea who you are), is that you're not a big multinational or someone with an organisation with a lot of funding behind them. If you say something about them (true or not), you can be sued for libel without them having to bring any evidence forward.

The ridiculous law is heavily weighted in favour of those with good lawyers - and good lawyers cost a lot of money. So in your case, it was the other way round - you were libelled by someone, and possibly didn't have the massive funds to go after them - which could be why it took so long to be resolved (I obviously don't know the details of your case, but a paper shouldn't be in the position to write libellous comments and feel safe from any action)?

Some interesting links:

http://www.libelreform.org/
http://www.senseaboutscience.org/pages/judgment-in-simon-singh-libel-case.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2012/jun/27/libel-reform-get-right-defamation-bill
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trafigura#Super-injunction
http://richardwilsonauthor.wordpress.com/2011/11/15/slaying-the-super-injunction-dragon-and-dismantling-the-secret-courts/

Richard Wilson describes it (in that last link) as "rich man's justice". That's the problem with UK's libel laws.

You are factually correct and sum it up perfectly when you mention "rich man's justice" but you know as well as I do that realistically no one sues for libel apart from famous people and multi nationals. It just isn't a viable option financially: even finding a lawyer who will entertain looking at a libel case is hard work.

People don't realise it isn't a case of proving someone said something defamatory, it is proving it did indeed have a detrimental effect on your life or business as in it was seen by your contemporaries/colleagues.

I would suggest posting something on FB is pretty much guaranteed to be seen by contemporaries and colleagues!

However - my own personal opinion is if you say X casino is rubbish or badly managed etc it shouldn't be a banning offence. There is the angle though that if you think it's so bad why do you want to go there anyway, so a ban shouldn't be a problem. Obviously if you say people are cheating and the casino knows this you are walking straight into the line of fire.