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CA Court: Message Boards Are Opinions, Not Facts
Masem writes: "According to this Newsbytes story, a CA appeals court has issued a ruling that says that typical messages posted to internet message boards can not be considered as libel or slander, as they inheritently are framed as opinions and not as statements of fact. The case stems from rather negative comments posted by defendants about a computer reseller company on the internet; the company sued for libelous comments; lower courts did initially rule for the company, but the appeals court has overturned this. While not every message posted in a public forum is safe, the court's decision seems to convey that unless the message is framed as a form of fact, then any message posted to a public internet forum should be considered as opinion, and thus cannot be considered as a libelous comment."
Now we can really bash who the heck we want with no fear of reprisals...as long as we don't say anything to make anyone think that we're stating a fact.
Bill Gates Beware [insert evil grin here]
-- Wiccan Army, 13th Airborne Division "We will not fly silently into the night"
Change to
Besides, the best defense may just be, "Hey, this is Slashdot -- you were expecting facts?";-)
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Practice random senselessness and act kind of beautiful.
Note to self: start every comment "IMHO . . ."
How about a new tag for HTML/UBB/whatever:
<fact>Linux rules, M$ drools!</fact>
This tag would lend the enclosed text more credence, but also hold the poster responsible for its content.
heh.
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
the feverish oversugared lawyers at PrintCafe are trying to sue our favorite dotbomb news site to get real names of .. "Ex-DLJ", "sucky-me", and "idiot". No joke. Seems they posted some stuff that printcafe no like, and therefore they're trying to get FC's nonexistant posting logs.
New Slashdot Moderation System:
(+1, Nice Opinion)
(+1, Almost sounds like a fact!)
(-1, Diagree with this opinion)
(-1, IMHO, You Suck!)
(-1, You can't say that about CmdrTaco!)
(+1, Oh yes he can!)
Deep, Deep, down in the sprawling dungeons below Redmond, Washington:
...well, I guess we need to go to plan B... Send forth the flying monkeys!! Muhahaha!!"
"Yes, Yes, my precious"
"Uhhh... Mr. Gates?"
"WHAT are you doing here!"
"Uhhh... sir, I was sent my the legal team... ya know, Nazgul, Balrog, & son... it seems a court ruling in California put a crimp in our plan to rid oursleves of that vile website, slash-"
"DON'T say that word!!
"Uh, sir.. we don't have any flying monkeys... all we have is Dancing Monkey boy..."
"Crap... forget this, I'm just going to stay down here and play with my invisibility ring"
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
I checked the date, but today is not April 1st. How is it possible that there are two postings on Slashdot today where California, the state with blackout summers and crazy laws, has issued court rulings that make sense! This is crazy. The world must be ending.
If this shows a trend, I may have to move out that way.
--- -- - -
Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
it's better than that
this month is a blue moon
so you can say "two sensible court rulings on the same day only come round once in a blue moon"
(a blue moon is when two full moons occur in the same month)
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
IANAL, but I bet this means we can all stop saying "IANAL".
324006
A company that's always checking their file systems must have pretty good records of everything.
I was just checking out Pud's book on amazon.
On that page:
Customers who shopped for this item also shopped for these items:
Wyco 992A-EH-10 10' Concrete Vibrator with 1-1/16" Head by Wyco
Yeah......something like:
I'd like to see someone try that one!
Disclaimer: The following comments represent opinion only and should NOT be regarded as statements of fact, slander or libel:
Microsoft SUCKS ! Windows SUCKS ! MSN SUCKS ! Internet Explorer SUCKS ! Passport SUCKS ! .NET SUCKS ! [insert name of Microsoft product here] SUCKS !
The following, however, are statements of fact:
Linux ROCKS! FreeBSD ROCKS! NetBSD ROCKS! OpenBSD ROCKS! Darwin ROCKS! Amiga ROCKS! BeOS ROCKS! IceWM ROCKS! vi ROCKS! Opera for Linux ROCKS! Qmail ROCKS! csh ROCKS! [insert name of UN*X program here] ROCKS!
Oh well.
Uh... *wibbles*
Is that... Is that 10' vibrator made of concrete, or a 10' device for vibrating concrete? Beeeeeg Deeference. Although both peg my silliness meter...
*wibbles some more*
--Fesh
Kill -9 'em all, let root@localhost sort 'em out.
worth changing my signature over.
still, it's only california. there are, what, like twenty more states?
"Mister Potato-head --MISTER POTATO-HEAD! Backdoors are not secrets!" (War Games, 1983)
that sees the irony in the fact that court decisions are called opinions and not facts? If I am, it must be the caffeine...