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

Internet is not a paper

[mpawlo]

Liability for publishers is a very hard issue to deal with. The publisher of the leading Swedish daily Aftonbladet was held accountable for hate speech published in one of its forums. I wrote a short comment on the case published by The Register on the caveats in running an online forum: 'If the media companies and their publishers are held accountable for everything published in their web forums we will soon face an Internet where the possibility of a widened debate has been seriously damaged by law. Let us grasp the uniqueness of the Internet before it is gone. The Internet is not a paper.'

Regards

Mikael

will they come to pick me up?

[kipple]

just wondering.. if I am sued for something I have said on a website I own, will they come to pick me up and bring be in the US to be judged?

Also.. it would be funny if, say, the Chinese Government will sue the US government for "talking about illegal things such as freedom", because those pages can be seen from China.

Or will this lead to country-based firewalls?

Re:will they come to pick me up?

[Anonymous Coward]

From the article, quoting a lawyer: "'If you want to publish on the Internet material targeted to the reputation of a foreigner, you'd better have regard for the standards of law where the foreigner resides.'"

Would this be any foreigner? Any standards of law? Sharia?

Related Links

[GigsVT]

This libel suit is just one part of an ongoing battle, one between the police/prison industry, and the general public.

If you are interested in Virginia's prison problem, including the so-called "supermax" prisions, and the insane shit that goes down at one of them, check out the following sites.

Committee to end the lockdown at Marion (old)

Drugsense

Human Rights Watch

November.org

In Virginia, prison is a big business, we import criminals to fill our prisons, and it's used as a source of revenue. On-duty cops are paid state funds to lobby the state legislature for harsher laws. Police, as a organized group, should not have a political voice, they are supposed to enforce the laws, not create them.

I'm no liberal, I believe in strict enforcement of sane laws. But when you have police writing the laws, to protect and expand their own industry, it does not serve the public's best interest.

Death of on-line publication?

[mccalli]

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.

Surely the above paragraph could also be applied to national newspapers, national broadcast news, national magazines...basically anything created in one place but available everywhere.

The fact that nationally-available media is still created and published probably means that online media would also still be created and published.

Cheers,
Ian

Disclaimer: Not only am I not a lawyer but I'm British, which means I have no idea about American laws in these circumstances.

Re:Very Dangerous

[Chanc_Gorkon]

Um....how is a libelious statement covered under free speech? Free speech is not totally free speech and can never be. You can't walk in to a crowded theater and shout fire and not expect to be arrested for inciting a riot that will insue after everyone starts to panic and rush out of the theature. I think the post is really taking to much for granted. People on so many websites and in so many forums are not wanting to be accountable for anything they say. The fact is you are accountable. You can go on a site and slander someone the same way you can't do it on TV. IANAL, but I think most lawyers would agree with my opinion. Free speech is a priviledge, not a right (it's only called a right under the constitution). If the populous continue's to make statements they don't want to be accountable for, well maybe free speech isn't a good idea. Don't get me wrong, I think mosty free speech is a good thing. I should be able to say anything I want about CmdrTaco, Hemos or Cowboy Neal without publicly slandering them. From what I gather about the Dow Jones case is soem guy in Australia is pissed he lost money because of what was said on their site. Well, then the person and the site who wrote that can be found libel for it! Could this establish an E-Jurisdiction? Well, sure it can. Just because we are on a World Wide Web doesn;t mean we can't be found libel for what we said! Does this mean that publishing will cease on the web? I doubt it. People and companies will just have to make sure they are careful what they say. Something they should already be doing.

Not any country - not yet

[Kjella]

Or do they mean that if something is libellous in any state of the USA, any pulisher in the world could be sued under USA law, even if they are not resident in that country?

This one I'd think, if it's "directed" at that jurisdiction. That was at least why they wanted DVD-Jon trialed under californian law, because they considered it an attack on the MPAA (residing in California).

And yes, there's a definite possibility that other countries would enforce the same laws, should USA do so. If USA can trial persons outside their country, why can't everybody else?

Kjella

The Common Denominator Effect

[DerFeuervogel]

This is to be expected. Whenever you try to plug dissimilar systems
together you get the common denominator effect. Recall the old
cross-platform applications back when there were legitimately
multiple available operating systems :^).

But seriously, The solution to this is a uniform set of laws
internationally and a uniform set of constitutional rights.
Since national sovereignty isn't going away anytime soon we have
an impasse. So common denominator effect rules and there isn't
much you can do about it. Hiding behind sovereignty will only
last a while since economic dependencies will eventually
override this last wall of defense.

Expect things to get allot worse before they get any better since
the people who can effect the needed changes have to answer to
constituents who won't stand for dilution of their rights or
ill-gotten privileges.

The Internet was to bring us all together - what we didn't realise
is that we don't really all LIKE each other, but the genie is out of
the bottle so hang on it's gonna get rough.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Just a minute

[Kierthos]

I can't remember the exact legal term, but there is something where the decisions found in one state may be legally binding in all others. The key thing is is "may be". Some states have laws on the books that are violations of law in other states.

Plus, through in the fact that this is a civil case, not a criminal one. In a criminal case, you must prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. In a civil case, the guilt only needs to be established by a preponderance of evidence. What that means is in a civil case, it has to be "more likely then not" that guilt is evident. (This is, btw, how OJ was liable for the deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman in a civil court, regardless of the fact that he had been found not guilty earlier in a criminal court.)

What this all boils down to is that _if_ this case goes through in Virginia, and _if_ the publisher is found guilty of libel, then it is possible that the decision may be used to affect other cases in other states. But there is also a good chance of this heading up to Appeals Court, and maybe even to the Supreme Court.

IANAL,
Kierthos

The sky is falling hte sky is falling!

[cluge]

Got to love the author of this article. The case here involves someone suing libel. Slander, and not telling the truth are not protected under the first amendment. The statement that all on-line publishing may go away because of this case is so chicken little one has to wonder if the author has feathers!

If a publisher is sure that their stories are well researched and the reporters have sufficient evidence to back up their stories, then there it doesn't matter what state you get sued in. The publisher wins. I think the problem comes when publishers (and other media for that matter) that have in the past published blatant lies, but are protected by a certain states week libel laws.

Isn't it a good thing that the press can be called to the mat for their untruths? I remember at one time the NY times oft quoted as "All the news that fitted to print". Yes inded, they WERE that bad (late 70's early 80s) After a change at the head of that ship, the NY times has redeemed much of it's former reputation. I believe a few law suits helped it along it's way.

Get a grip chicken little, the sky isn't falling.
cluge

Freedom of the Press...

[Sun Tzu]

... is great if you happen to be rich enough to own a printing press. The Internet changed that. Now, anyone, including me, can own a 'printing press'. If this decision stands, freedom of the press may be back exclusively in the hands of the powerful once again.

There are some great ideas in the Constitution of the United States. Freedom of speech and freedom of the press may be the most important of all.

Why this suit goes forth (& why it doesn't mat

[parliboy]

Let me say, I can understand why people are concerned. Defamation suits are hard to win in this country. The burden to meet is much less severe in other countries, including our good buddy GB. If federal (not international, but our very own) precedent is set allowing suits to be held in the jurisdiction of the person bring suit, then the theory goes that we're one step away from extending that to an international scale. Next thing you know, the AP is out $30M cause they called Castro a dictator.

Now, let's throw all of that out the window, because it doesn't apply in the least to the case in question.

If the newspaper in this suit sells even one subscription or newsstand copy in the state the suit is being filed (which it does) then it's established what is called "minimum contacts." If it sells papers in Virginia, it can be sued in Virginia. That the questionable material was seen on the internet as opposed to in black & white is competely irrelevant -- the company is doing business in Virginia. So, while the slippery slope can certainly exist, it doesn't exist here.

Move along, people, nothing to see here.

Said this before

[wirefarm]

But it still fits -
About 15 years ago, I heard that Iran had contacted the US govt and demanded that they hand over Madonna and Michael Jackson so that they could be put to death on obscenity charges.
(For some reason, the US chose not to...)
Yet, the US feels free to nab Skylaroff and that kid in Norway for doing stuff legal where they live.
Here in Japan, it seems to be legal to publish photos and videos of young teenagers that would get you put away for years in the US, yet pornography that is legal in the US is quite illegal here. They even go as far as to sandpaper away the "naughty bits" from every copy of Playboy and Penthouse imported into Japan. Who's right?

Maybe the best thing is to have the equivalent of that little "Kosher" mark on websites like they have on food, then let the viewer filter as they like. Then limit access to the internet to adults.

But then again, the US will probably just force its standards upon the rest of the world like they always do.