Lawyer Sues Yahoo for Message Board Name-Calling

Yardboy writes "Yahoo! News has a story concerning one Stephen Galton who has filed a class-action lawsuit against Yahoo claiming the company 'unfairly protected people who post negative messages on its bulletin boards and falsely advertised that it prevents such abusive messages.' Seems he was subjected to name-calling (such as shyster) when he signed up under the username 'stephengalton' in order to respond to a negative post about an unidentified client. As other users chimed in with negative remarks, Galton filed suit against them (it's not clear from the story for what) and sought their personal information from Yahoo via a subpoena. The lawsuit seeks restitution, a permanent injunction and other forms of relief. What's really interesting is all the message board posts relating to the story have been deleted."

Comments

Stephen Galton's Contact Info

[ambrosine10]

I assume this is him?

sgalton@galtonhelm.com

Go on, tell him what you think.

sgalton@galtonhelm.com - (213) 629-8800

[Jailbrekr]

http://news.messages.yahoo.com/bbs?action=m&board= 37172369&tid=nmtechyahoomessagesdc&sid=37172369&mi d=60

I think its important to post this information, before yahoo deletes it.

Please note that I am not posting anonymously. :)

Re:Protected speech

[localhost00]

Ever heard of libel or slander?

Yes I have. Libel is making a false statement of a person. Calling him a name is not a true or false statement, but is rather opinion. Libel is not calling someone an asshat or shyster. Libel is saying he killed Nichole Brown Simpson. Libel is saying he accepted money from Evil, Corp. when in fact he didn't.

Libel is the difference between demeaning opinions and demeaning false statements.