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Publishing Now Counts As Now

Posted by timothy on from the imagine-the-alternative dept.

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."

1 of 152 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Not necessarily good... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative
    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.

    [..]

    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.

    Usually, publishing means making something public, i.e. giving the public access to it. If you defame someone on cnn.com, but the plaintiff only hears about it ten years later, it would still have been published ten years previously.

    Also, remember that to defame some-one, there has to be at least one third party involved; if you just say 'Mr. T is a fool!' to Mr. T himself and nobody else hears it, that maybe be an insult, but it's not slander.