London-Based Reed Elsevier Buys ChoicePoint

[AtLiberty]

Reed Elsevier Buys ChoicePoint

By TOBY ANDERSON

LONDON (AP) — Reed Elsevier PLC, a London-based educational publisher and the owner of the Lexis Nexis information service, said Thursday it had agreed to buy U.S. data services firm ChoicePoint Inc. for 2.1 billion pounds ($4.1 billion) in cash.

As part of the transaction Reed will assume $600 million in debt, the company said in a statement.

ChoicePoint, headquartered in Alpharetta, Georgia, has more than 5,000 employees and provides data and analytics to the insurance industry.

More...

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5ivOtB7likY7f6-vytPAPngykanmAD8UUO70G0

[DS1]

1. cleaning up loose ends nt

[skooooo]

2. For those that don't know, Elsevier...

...is the most hated publishing conglomerate in librarianship. They are predatory with their pricing and control more and more of the information you can't afford (unless you have a good library to go to).

[mac2]

3. Banking and intelligence

going to be done out of London for the Neo Con World Order Government?

Choice Point has information on just about every American and was the subject or target of Congressional hearings about privacy.

I'm going to protest this buyout. First they tell us they need information for "terrorism" and to do medical insurance and then they sell our information all over the world. Crap! "Privitization" is dangerous.

I've worried about information from our federal government being abused by India now I have to worry about it by the British "Empire".

Must be a reason why the Billionaires are moving to Britain. Oh yes...our gold is there? Nixon part of the Bush gang took us off the gold standard. Whose hiding that gold from the WTC? All the robbery since Iraq and Afghanistan, etc.? Cayman Islands or London? The British elite rob people like the Bushs.

http://www.lexisnexis.com/ About Lexis Nexis.

Bush has sold us out. He should be impeached. Protest this sale of your private information.

[mod mom]

4. Could this have to do w the UK's strict anti-slander laws?

[mac2]

5. What?

[mod mom]

6. Could their "Libel Laws" protect Company officers from attacks seen here-More on UK Libel:

Libel laws explained

James Sturcke
guardian.co.uk,

Thursday August 31 2006 Article history · Contact us British libel laws were already complicated enough before the internet came along. Their aim is to balance the right of free speech against protection for the reputation of an individual from unjustified attack.
In law, a person is defamed if statements in a publication expose him to hatred or ridicule, cause him to be shunned, lower him in the estimation in the minds of "right-thinking" members of society or disparage him in his work.

Juries are told that the measuring stick of a libel being committed is whether any of this would affect how a "reasonable man" views the complainant.

There are defences in law for libel. The publisher could prove the statement to be true, it could be fair comment - so long as the opinion is based on true facts, is genuinely held and not influenced by malice - or it could be protected by privilege (reporting of comments made in parliament, courts and other official arenas are, generally speaking, protected from libel actions).

Since the 1998 Reynolds claim against Times Newspapers, it has become accepted that material published in the public interest is a further defence in libel proceedings.

The problem for anyone preparing to publish information which may be defamatory, is that the laws are very much open to interpretation. Different juries will have different views on what exactly influences a right-thinking man.

-snip
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2006/aug/31/news.politicsandthemedia

[Wilms]

7. It seems that could pose a bit of a problem.

You mean you'd have to know the difference between Database Technologies and ChoicePoint before posting about the Florida 2000 purge list?

I could definitely see that cramping a few people's style.