A Libel Suit May Establish E-Jurisdiction

BrianWCarver writes: "The NY Times (free registration blah blah...) is reporting that a libel suit may establish a precedent of allowing online publishers to be sued not in the jurisdiction where their servers reside, but in the jurisdiction of the complaintant. A warden at a Virginia jail didn't like the way he was portrayed by several Connecticut-based online news outlets so he sued in his home state of Virginia. "If the district court decision stands, online publishers could be sued for defamation in any state or country that an online article is read." The article goes on to worry that this will cause publishers to self-censor their online publishing to avoid offending anyone in any jurisdiction, whatsoever, which if carried to its logical conclusion, means online publishing would simply cease." This may remind you of an earlier case in which an Australian businessman sued Dow Jones for libel. Update: 05/27 15:12 GMT by J : Jamie Love points out elsewhere that 60 countries, including the USA, are negotiating a treaty regarding Internet jurisdiction for libel and defamation.

Comments

This article is even more alarming.

[tg_schlacht]

This article is even more alarming than the one this entire thread is about.

Some rinky-dink, ignorant, slack-jawed yokel Judge thinks he and his city aren't bound by the Constitution of the United States?

Mister Fucktard Judge needs to stripped of his citizenship and locked in a pit with nothing to eat but his own feces.

Re:*sigh*

[pmc]

Truth is never libel

This is oft repeated, but is not true. Libel is defamation of character, not lies about somebody. It is perfectly possible to libel someone with the truth. One way is omission - saying about somebody "She attends the sexually transmitted diseases clinic daily." may well be truthful, but leaving out the fact that she is a nurse there makes it defamatory, and hence potentially libellous.

In some juristictions (such as the UK) there are classes of statements that, while true, are automatically considered defametory and therefore libellous - these are statements made about people with "spent" criminal convictions. Under the rehabilitation of offenders act it is libel to mention to any unqualified body about certain criminal offencese in a persons past. There are usually minor crimes, and they become spent after five years.

Libel must have a specific intent to be injurious

No intent is necessary, although presence of intent obviously influences damages.

must be a knowing falshood

Obviously not, in light of the previous answer. Neglecting that it is still not true. There is also recklessness: if you publish something with a disregard for whether it is true or not then you can be guilty of libel if it is false even if you didn't know it was false at the time.