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@oldandtired said:
by law 22. An owner, occupier or invitees of a lot must not post material that could reasonably be expected to cause offense or embarrassment ….
OK, thanks for that. A few points:
You don’t know that it’s the EC members who are taking down notices (but it’s not a bad guess). However, it could be people who support them or other owners who simply don’t like seeing the scheme’s dirty laundry aired in public.
Chances are that this is one EC member, acting independently, thinking they have the authority to do so.
Is the wording of the the notices offensive. Emotive terms like “irrational” or “disgraceful”, let alone words like “corrupt”, could offend some people.
But let’s assume that your notices are not offensive. What can you do?
You could put a motion to the EC that they define “offense or embarrassment” as per your by-law to allow for healthy debate while excluding personal attacks and profanity. You might point out in discussions that any EC member who takes down a non-offensive notice is in breach of your by-laws because they do allow notices to be posted.
Alternatively, run a number of copies of your notices and every time it’s taken down, you put another one up with the additional line of “This is the second [or third or fourth] copy of this notice which is being removed by people who don’t want you to know what’s going on.”
Then, every time someone takes the notice down, it strengthens your argument.
I ran a successful noticeboard campaign a few years ago against one of our EC’s more lunatic ideas – and I did so because the information they were giving the owners was just a pack of lies, plain and simple. I used the above technique, my posters stayed up and we won. (Although they had the last laugh when they moved the noticeboard to somewhere fewer people would see it).
Finally, if you think it’s worth the effort, create a little website or blog called http://www.[name or address of your building]facts.com then keep all your arguments online but just post little notes on your noticeboard every so often that say “Because of censorship of this noticeboard, the truth about what’s happening in this building can now be found on www. [yourbuilding]facts .com.”
Website companies like Crazydomains.com.au will provide a website plus hosting for less than $4 a month and a .com domain name for $12.50 a year. Domains ending in .com.au are more expensive.
But whatever your means of communication, try to avoid personal attacks, moderate your language and be aware of defamatory accusations.
Noticeboards are a great way of stimulating discussion in a community. They should not be censored but neither should they be the vehicle for personal attacks, vendettas and crazy conspiracy theories. That’s what the internet is for.