Slashdot Mirror
Publishing Now Counts As Now
wik writes "The New York Times reports that the statute of limitations for defamation is one year from the date of posting a page on the web. The courts had to decide whether the posting date or the last download date of a web page constitutes the publication date."
They're going to have a bit of a problem determining the posting date, as the date header in the http response can quite easily be forged.
I suppose this is where things like Google cache and the Wayback archive come in useful, (IANAL) but it seems to me that for them to be trusted, further legislation and rulings would be necessary to give them reliable legal status.
And, like, what if someone hacked them? These things need to be considered!
And in the meantime, great submissions (imho) like this one are deleted.
Go figure.
I applaud the court for this decision. If the date of publication changed everytime somone new viewed a web page, then the statute of limitations would be rendered meaningless. Defamation suits are usually just slapp suits anyway. The fewer of them we have wasting the courts' time, the better.
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
Unless I'm missing something, if I want to defame someone in the US now, all I have to do is upload the material to a web site, and wait 12 months before I give anyone a link to it.
The situation on the web is rather different from with traditional publishing, since it is much easier for web pages to be "published" well in advance of when any significant number of people see them.
If there is to be a 12 month statute of limitations, I think that the window should begin *when the plaintiff becomes aware of the material*, not when it was actually published.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
A YRO decision that I actually agree with? But seriously, I think that this one is actually coherent. If you post something defamous, and (assuming it later gets yanked), the law should judge it from the time you commited the *act* of uploading the document from the web, not from the time someone else saw it.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
What about timezones? Whose timezones does this go by - the poster's or the obnoxious suer?
So the trick is to post your defamatory content on an obscure website, and let it sit there for a year before linking to it from a popular website.
Interesting. I bet there are 'teams' out there already setting up the obscure websites.
Does the httpd on my dialup NetBSD box count as a 'website' in this ruling? I'll just park my slander there for a year to let it ripen.
By this ruling, you can post up a webpage saying anything about anyone and then just wait a year to get it indexed and spread it around and you're in the clear. Just make sure you have proof you posted it a year earlier.
Keenan
Is the publication date of a Book, the day it first went to press or the day the last copy was sold. I'm confused.
If the publication date of a news paper the day it was published, or the last day that someone wrappes up a china set with it before mnoving house.
Oh please help me clear my confussed mind.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
So if I wish to publish something that I'm concerned will get me slap-suited, such as a critique of a leader of a well-financed cult, can I bury it in my website in such a fashion that search engines are unlikely to find it, but a visitor could still stumble across it, wait a year, then post it on the front page?
What is a good method for making a document technically available, but unlikely to be spidered. Too many engines ignore spider.txt. How about placing it behind a form entry?
It's always nice to see common sense prevail.
Although this does raise issues of how to authoritatively determine date of posting, the alternative would effictively void any statute of limitations.
I am concerned about any program, any piece of hardware, any treaty, any law that treats me as a consumer, not a citizen
Note to self: From now on all pages that go up on my site will have their stated publication date at the bottom and said date pushed back one year.
The 'courts' should keep a deceased judge in the closet to make decisions like this.
No brain required,
cheap as all get-out.
--Can you live on beer alone? Join the experiment at httb://www.oooz.zyy/bud.cgi?day=???
The whole issue of 'publication date' is very slippery online. With books or newspapers, it's easy, but on the net, it can be a very difficult issue.
/. picks it up and adds a newsitem about it - complete with a link to the text. Is that publication? By me or by /.? Can I get into trouble for something /. does? Can /. be sued for defamation by providing that link, even if the statute of limitation has elapsed on the text for me?
/Janne
Assume I've written a rant where I accuse CowboyNeal of secretly harboring immoral thoughts about herring. I put it up on my private web page. That should be the publication date, no? Well, maybe. Nobody could find it as there are no links to it, and I don't tell anybody about it.
Suddenly Google gets hold of the link. Is that the publication date, now that people can actually find the page? On one hand, the text may have languished on a nowhere website for ten years, and I've totally forgotten about it, so surely I can't be punished for google finding it ten years after it being written? On the other hand, is it considered published (or even defamation) if nobody can find it unless I tell them where to look?
It all erupts into a huge uproar; CowboyNeal denies everything and maintains he has unhealthy obsessions only for salmon, but never, ever, herring. Of course
This is just scratching the surface, of course; the problem here (as with so many aspects of the net) is that concepts that are clear and workable offline do not translate well online.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
That story was run a while back. There weren't as many details to it since they hadn't been worked out yet, but I'm sure that's the reason for the rejection.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Just because something may be available on the web for years to come, doesn't make that any different from typical print publications. I can go to my library and look up 20 yr old newspaper articles. They're still available, so why should accessing webpages be any different? Publication dates means the date that the article was PUBLISHED. It doesn't make ANY difference when someone actually READS it.
Now, I wonder what effect this would have if an article was changed after the initial publication date. This is a possibility of all digital news, where papers are pretty well stuck with what they print.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
I am glad that they decided this way. When a newspaper is published, do they go by the date of publication or the most recent tome someone bought a copy? Recently things have been more harshly regulated simply because they were electronic; I am glad that that isn't the case here. Maybe we can continue to get some sanity in the courts. Just a thought. :>
"Never, never suspect the dreams within the dreams of dreaming children." ~The Amazon Quartet
Well, you could make a stab at proving that the date of posting was at or before a given date by displaying the page in a browser and photographing the display with a copy of today's newspaper next to it.
The trouble is, you could load the page from a local hard drive and then just type in anything for the URL in the Explorer or Netscape address line.
It's difficult to see how you could ever have ironclad proof.
I can't help but think that there are two exceptions to that rule. Doctors and lawyers are two professions that have basically been 'set up' so that they are quite profitable and legal, and enjoyable to the people interested in that kind of thing. The rich gotta set up their kids with good jobs somehow. :P
:P
I think that the barriers in place to keep losers out of the medical field are reasonable (dont want an idiot operating on people etc) and there will always be sick people. However, lawyers... I don't think anything bad about their barriers of entry either, but they do things to keep themselves important. Like endless laws that are intentionally designed so that no normal (or even reasonally above average + educated) person can read them. Also the odd suits that we all know too well....
Well, at least this one went well. But you have to wonder why it was necessary at all.
"Never, never suspect the dreams within the dreams of dreaming children." ~The Amazon Quartet
DARK HELMET: What the hell am I looking at? When does this happen in the movie?
COL. SANDERS: Now. You're looking at now, sir. Everything that happens now is happening now.
DARK HELMET: What happened to then?
COL. SANDERS: We passed then.
DARK HELMET: When?
COL. SANDERS: Just now. We're at now, now.
DARK HELMET: Go back to then.
COL. SANDERS: When?
DARK HELMET: Now!
COL. SANDERS: Now?
DARK HELMET: Now!
COL. SANDERS: I can't.
DARK HELMET: Why?
COL. SANDERS: We missed it.
DARK HELMET: When?
COL. SANDERS: Just now.
DARK HELMET: When will then be now?
COL. SANDERS: Soon
Someone writes something in a newspaper, its printed on 1/1/2001. Some 3/3/2002, its 14 months old. Someone buys a copy of the paper off a friend that has kept it, and reads it.
Does that change the date of publication?
You'd better watch what you say. If you're not careful, Dubya might decide to invade and take over Canada. I just hope he has a platoon with a spare afternoon to take care of it...
Enjoy every day like it's your last. One day you will be right.
You guys might remember the DMCA Threats I received over my program embed (for TrueType fonts). I think this case has some interesting consequences for my fight, because I published my program in 1997 and haven't modified the page since. 1997 was before the DMCA became law. If in fact that publishing was found to be the only act of "trafficking", then they would not be able to sue me because of the ban on ex post facto laws in the constitution.
Of course, that defense is much weaker than the dozens of other reasons why their threats are totally stupid. ;)
Another workaround would be to encrypt your data, and then have the key mysteriously appear online after a year. In this case, the more publically available the message was, the better.
I'd mod you up.
It depends, In the UK you can't be had for past actions that are now illegal. You may also serve time for breaking a law that gets defunct, because you 'BROKE THE LAW'
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
What I'm kind of curious about is how they are ever going to prove that the web page WAS in fact published. It would be really easy to download the front page of any web site, put in some defamatory comments, and then claim that it was published on such and such date. Don't get me wrong, I actually think this is one of the few YRO that strikes me as a step in the right direction, but I fail to see what the definitive criteria for establishing publication is. For someplace with lots of readers (like slashdot), it's easy, as there are plenty of witnesses, but something tells me not too many people visit or could vouch for my website on a regular basis. Any ideas on what you can do to protect yourself?
The "I" word is mentioned and common sense goes out of the window. Why does it have to be "special" just because the delivery mechanism is a web page? Is a book published everytime someone new reads it? And they spent time debating this?
so is that like an expiration date on internet posts now ??
Who is this Karma guy and why is he bad ??
The courts had to decide whether the posting date or the last download date of a web page constitutes the publication date.
Everytime someone reads it, it gets a new publication date?
is that the expiration date on internet posts now ??
(POST DATE 07/04/2002)
(SUE BY DATE 07/02/2003)
Who is this Karma guy and why is he bad ??
What about, for instance, weblogs, especially those powere dby Blogger? When Blogger "publishes" a weblog page, the page may have several days of posts on it - so the original post may have been uploaded to the server a month ago, but it just got re-uploaded when the user published a new entry.
Hmmm.
Karma: T-rexcellent.
Just to play devil's advocat, here is the oposite side of the argument.
This question is made more dificult because the statute of limitations on libel is so small partialy because publishing is considered a timely issue. An article in a paper published a year ago is less damaging to you than one published yesterday.
But on the internet, a webpage published a year ago is still there. It still comes up in search engines today, and is just as potentialy damaging as it was a year ago.
Geez, good thing the ruling went the way it did, or else you can be sure we'd have the RIAA and MPAA charging hard soon after to imply that copyrights on movies and music renewed every time someone listened to them. That would make the Sonny Bono copyright extension act almost laughable by comparison in terms of granting copyright near-perpetuity.
"So on one hand, honey is an amazingly sophisticated and efficient food source. On the other hand it's bee backwash."
How would I know when I have been defamed (or slandered, libeled, etc.)?
Do I have to Google myself?
I've lived a full life, so far. Attended college. Worked at a number of high-tech companies. Participated in several civic organizations. Traveled in Europe. Though I've tried not to, I'm sure I've ticked some people off along the way.
Now let's imagine that one of my former acquaintences gets a computer, creates a personal web page, and still holding a grudge, defames me on their web site.
My name is relatively uncommon, yet Google found well over 600 pages with my name on it (I didn't even know I'd been to Antarctica! =)... and that's for just one form of my name (First name, Last Name); I'm sure there'd be more if I searched for other variants (e.g. "Marty" instead of "Martin", include middle name, common misspellings of my last name, etc.) I would need to examine every one of these pages to see if any defamatory material had been published.
Consider, too, what happens if my career path changes so that I came to have a highly-visibile role as, say, a CEO, Senator, recognized industry expert, or talk-show host? Far more references to my name that I'd have to search for defamation. Ditto if I were a witness to a gruesome crime or accident.
In the past, publication was difficult and required relatively large amounts of money (for the printing press, book binding machine, etc.) and specialized expertise (e.g. typesetting). That is no longer the case. The first liberating step was desktop publishing; now there's the World Wide Web. What will another 10 or 20 years bring? Consider a groundswell of interest in weblogs facilitated by text-to-speech web publishing using a cell phone for input.
IMHO, I think the court ruled as best they could in light of the circumstances of this particular case, but I can't help but think there's a far larger problem here that needs to be adressed.
as with most internet things these days, you're best bet is just staying away from countries that have strict laws on these things.
Most things published on the Web have about the same credibility level and duration as something that someone said in the bathroom to someone at the urinal next to them.
Were I a public figure defamed on a website, I'd simply ignore it. Suing the person could give them more publicity, and often more good is gained by not giving rumors credibility by fighting them.
That having been said, if you're *really* concerned, there are services out there that specialize in looking for mentions of your name or company so you can tell what people are saying about you.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
vim ~/t00r/public_html/flamer.html :wq
<here write the flame, defamation or other>
touch -t 199901021212.20 ~/t00r/public_html/flamer.html
done and done!
- Make a false statement, either recklessly, with malice, or negligenly (in the case of a private figure).
- Publish it to a 3rd party. If I send you a letter, saying that YOU are are a convicted child molester, it does not count because it is not to a 3rd party.
- And it must cause harm.
My summary judgment motion details the requirements of libel, under Mass law.Anyways, for most torts, the statute of limitations runs when the plaintiff knew, or should have known of the act/harm.
Fight Spammers!
New York Law Journal
The opinion
I heartily approve of this ruling. The court has managed to make a sensible decision about an online legal issue by extrapolating existing laws. No need to treat web pages as something magically different, or worthy of less protection.
Where is the auto registration link? I seem to have lost it.
The issue of when the statute of limitations "starts" is important, but /. readers should not assume that one year is the actual statute of limitations. I think in most states, the statute of limitations for defamation or slander is 3 or 4 years.
The publication date in 'kaldifjördur' is the original date of publication in 'kaldifjördur'. The publication date everywhere else is when you started selling it everywhere else. You're protected by the original date of publication, methinks, only if the victim read the offending stuff from a book originally sold in 'kaldifjördur'.
whats to stop anyone from making the post date
dynamic, so each view shows the latest date or
sometime close, giving the appearance that its
recent and that the one year limit is not yet up.
Yet another sign that untechnical people should
not decide the fate of the technicaly inclined.
Please....rejections of great postings is a way of life around here:
Personally I gave up..
2002-03-29 17:03:07 Soon your computer will know how you feel even whe (articles,science) (rejected)
2002-04-03 14:31:42 Montreal radio hosts pull April Fool's prank on Bi (articles,news) (rejected)
2002-04-08 17:59:14 Japan may go nuclear (articles,news) (rejected)
2002-04-09 16:40:07 IBM To Unveil Antipiracy Software (articles,ibm) (rejected)
2002-04-10 16:54:58 Suitors for Global Crossing Exposed in email (articles,news) (rejected)
2002-04-24 13:50:18 Journey to the Internet's Depths (articles,news) (rejected)
2002-04-30 13:52:28 Canadians Crave Big Tubes (articles,news) (rejected)
2002-05-01 16:24:31 You can't tell a Link from it's Homepage (articles,news) (rejected)
2002-05-01 18:44:29 Biotechnology May Make Superhero Fantasy a Reality (articles,news) (rejected)
2002-05-06 15:33:45 Is it a 'magic box' or a high-tech hoax? (articles,news) (rejected)
2002-05-21 21:26:58 MS threatens Keith Teare's Free Speach (articles,news) (rejected)
2002-06-04 14:57:34 Draconian DMCA (articles,news) (rejected)
2002-06-05 15:29:49 Web-blogging class (articles,news) (rejected)
2002-06-08 15:29:36 Garageband.com makes a comeback (articles,news) (rejected)
How far could this reasonably be taken?
E.g. suppose one posts an article on topic X
on an obscure website mainly about topic Y
A year passes before the same article gets
posted on another site, that deals with X
(ie a more likely place for it to be noticed)
A law suit arises... but the author/posters
defends with "statute of limitation" protects
me...
Something tells me that such a defense wouldn't
work...
I agree. Conversely, an article published a year ago in a magazine will be in a doctor's waiting room for the next decade, so it'll be just as damaging.
While a web page can be unpublished and republished using at(1) and telnet several times a minute.
I don't think there's any difference.
To the original question, there's also no difference. Setting the limit one year from the date of last access would be as absurd as if you set the date for a magazine one year from the date it was last read.
cheers
Neil
Perth WA
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
Would anyone have even considered making the case that the publication date for a print document was the last time someone bought or read a copy ? Hope the idiots who made the argument had to pay all the costs.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.