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."

Comments

New disclaimer:

[rjamestaylor]

"Comments are owned by the Poster."

Change to

"Comments are Opinions owned by the Poster."

Besides, the best defense may just be, "Hey, this is Slashdot -- you were expecting facts?"

;-)

Re:New disclaimer:

[Bonker]

+5 Funny, yes, but damned good advice all the same. Are you listening, Taco?

Changing the line to something like

"All comments are the opinions of the owner and not the property of Slashdot"

might just save you a world of grief down the line.

Yeah, but...

[cburley]

isn't this ruling just one court's opinion??

Good news for Fuckedcompany.com

[Nerftoe]

Fuckedcompany.com recently received a subpoena from the lawyers of Printcafe.com to cough up "records" of the anonymous posters who made slanderous comments on the site. Some of the comments were directed to the CEO's wife. It seems that Pud (owner of FC) doesn't keep records of the IP addresses of those who frequent the site. Pud said that it was too bad that he already had finished up his book, because they would have received a mention.

/. is still safe

[EccentricAnomaly]

Deep, Deep, down in the sprawling dungeons below Redmond, Washington:

"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!! ...well, I guess we need to go to plan B... Send forth the flying monkeys!! Muhahaha!!"

"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"

This ruling (would) make no sense

[cryptochrome]

There's a big difference between a negative opinion and libel - an opinion is a personal statement meant to negatively impact the object, while libel is a FALSE written statement meant to negatively impact the object.

So while it's true that most of what you find on message boards is bullshit, and should thus be regarded as such without further verification, it can still be libel. All that matters is that it's a lie presented as fact to hurt the object.

However, what the defendants were accused of is TRADE libel - apparently they were saying things like "this stock sucks" clearly within the context of opinion. It could be considered libel within some contexts - but not within that of a message forum. Anyone getting stock tips off one of those is pretty dumb. So in their limited case, it seems they were not commiting libel.

cryptochrome