Slashdot Mirror
Blog Faces Lawsuit Over Reader Comments
Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "In a legal case being watched closely by bloggers, an Internet company has sued the owner of a blog for comments posted to his site by readers, the Wall Street Journal Online reports. Traffic-Power.com, which sells tools for boosting Web traffic, sued Aaron Wall, age 25, over statements posted in the comments section of Wall's search-engine-optimization blog, SEOBook.com. (Wall also has posted about the case.) 'Legal analysts said the case falls into somewhat murky legal territory, but that Mr. Wall may have some protection from liability under federal law,' WSJ.com says. 'Courts generally have held that the operators of computer message boards and mailing lists cannot be held liable for statements posted by other people. Blogs might be viewed in a similar light, they said.' However, Daniel Perry, a lawyer who has followed the case, says that Wall's case is complicated by his own negative comments about Traffic-Power, which could be seen as a competitor to his site. 'To be candid, he sort of moved into this moving propeller,' Perry said. 'The Internet is not your personal stump to beat up people.'"
"The Internet is not your personal stump to beat up people."
Actually, that's one of the greatest strengths of the internet. True freedom of speech.
this is getting old and so are you
blog
The Internet is not your personal stump to beat up people
What makes you think your law applies in my country? I know that US law may like to be extended to every reach of the world but those countires own their internet too which would apply to their laws.
Maybe I don't understand, but if this isn't libel then isn't it covered under the 1st amendment's free speech clause?
I just bought a Scion xA and had to drive forty miles out of my way to do it. The reason was that my local dealership screwed around with me so much that I couldn't stand to buy from them.
I went on the site scionlife.com and in their "Review Dealers" section ripped Romano Scion of Syracuse, NY. I told how they had done me wrong and advised others to never shop there.
Is ScionLife liable? Am I? Is Slashdot liable now that I've put it up here?
And finally, if someone spray paints a swastica on my garage door while I'm out of town and unable to remove it, am I liable for a hate crime?
Yeah, I'm as old as my UID would suggest.
How can you sue someone for other peoples' comments on his/her blog? Most people don't even read the comments, and are certainly not responsible for their content. That's like suing the phone company for what someone said on the phone.
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
If it wasn't slanderous, then what is the problem? People have the right to present their review of any product, or anything.
All the articles I read about it only say he posted a negative comment about the web-search boosting product. Did he lie about it, or was it a fair comment that he made?
Some people will sue others over even looking at them funny. Overall, though, I have my money on Aaron Wall.
...the court systems are there to beat people up with.
US Citizen living abroad? Register to vote!
'The Internet is not your personal stump to beat up people.'
Horse pucky. If you aren't free to share your opinion, then this isn't the United States I thought I lived in. More and more, it seems like the freedom of speech is directly related to how much money you have.
There is a huge difference between blatently attempting to undermine and destroy a reputation, and simply expressing your opinion (negative or otherwise). The ability to express one's opinion, even if said opinion is extremely negative, should be protected speech.
The people filing this lawsuit are nothing more than schoolyard bullies.
you are right, until you factor in the effect of the WTO treaties..
All they have to do is attach the term ' commerce ' to the case, and the more favorable laws apply .
---- Booth was a patriot ----
There are tons of people out there saying microsoft blows, and I havn't heard of them getting sued. I think they are just scared because, it must be true. Personally I have never used any of their tools, but I think they should be able to handle a few people badmouthing them. I think this is a gross overreaction on their part. I say to them "MAN UP" and "GROW UP" and maybe make your product better if it has problems, don't sue the guy who wants to save people the headache and money of using said product.
w00t
...is for the publicity. If they had simply ignored this blog, who would know about this company whose initials are TP? Now everyone on slashdot, among other web forums, knows. Troll successful.
""To be candid, he sort of moved into this moving propeller," said Mr. Perry, a former Orange County judge. He said courts would likely focus on how Mr. Wall responded to requests to remove material from his site, and Mr. Wall's criticism of Traffic-Power.com. "The Internet is not your personal stump to beat up people.""
wrong try again - it called freedom of speech -
like I can say microsoft sucks and is a convicted monopolists that uses strongarm tactics to undermine the open standards in the industry.
I also can say Linux rocks.
since when are we going to sensor what people say on the internet. I tell people all day that microsoft sucks - so you are telling me I can get sued for that. Can we all say Back in the USSR. There I knew you could.
"The Internet is not your personal stump to beat up people"
:)
:(
It isn't?
Last I heard people were free to express an opinion, even one that is "wrong".
Well sure, spreading lies and actively defacing or hurting an individual should be frowned upon, but bad-mouthing a company or a competitor you don't like? Hello? Slashdot anyone? Yes, the editors get involved in this too. Slashdot is as much of a bash fest as it is a news and informative opinion medium.
If merely bad mouthing a company that you don't like is not legal, Slashdot would have been sued out of existance long ago! Half the comments made about companies we don't like here are in fact complete nonsense and out-right lies.
If cases like this hold up, places like Slashdot don't have much of a future. As much as I hate the large amount of truly idiodic comments that cross this site, I don't want to see it taken down by corporate lawyers and I sure as hell don't want to feel like every word I say, interpreted in any number of ways by any number of people might suddenly land me in jail.
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
Freedom of Speech is not free. It's costs are measured by the expenses of defending it.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Billie Holiday & Arthur Herzog Jr said it best:
Mama may have, papa may have
But God bless the child that's got his own
That's got his own
He just worry 'bout nothin'
Cause he's got his own
Nice analogy but I don't think it fully applies. There is nothing inherently evil about search engine optimization. The search engines are do or die for small e-commerce sites and optimizing your content to get the most notice is something you cannot ignore.
Now spamming link sites to increase your page ranking (ie getting more google votes) can be seen as sleazy. If you do a Google search on any niche product and look at the top google fetches typically will find a sleazy seo behind the scenes providing mass links. I wish google would improve it algorithm to validate these links.
Everything I know about IP I learned on slashdot, but...
(Sorry, I've always wanted to say that. Actually, most of what I know about IP was learned while helping my SO study for her IP class in her MBA program)
Let me get the facts straight, as the article seemed a little light on details. Some guy, in the US, posts factual information or personal opinion on his weblog, and allows others to do so as well. These include unkind words about a company who makes a product or service which may compete with a product or service with which the author is financially involved. (try and parse that one)
A Trade Secret, traditionally, is something so necessary to your core business and so valuable that you believe that keeping it a secret is more likely to make you money than patenting it, or it is unpatentable. Telling the world a trade secret is only unlawful if you are contractually bound not to tell, or if you came by the information through theft or other nefarious means. Once a trade secret is no longer secret, you have no protection (hence the incentive for patenting and licensing).
So, unless this guy stole the information, or is under a nondisclosure agreement, this looks an awful lot like free speech. The others who posted in his site may have written unkind things as well, but the comments are (I assume) clearly delineated as visitor comments, and not the writings of the author. I think you can go pretty far toward slander without getting into trouble that way.
I'm wondering why this is even an issue, unless its just punishement through lawyer fees, regardelss of the outcome.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
"Traffic-Power.com, which sells tools for boosting Web traffic, sued Aaron Wall, age 25, over statements posted in the comments section of Wall's search-engine-optimization blog, SEOBook.com" (emphasis mine)
Number one tool for boosting web traffic: publicity. Hence, lawsuit.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
But we've had the a "popular" and commercial net for 10 years now, and really in that time I don't think the world is going to end from a truckload of trolls and some slanderous ACs. In the end, the world has kept turning and for all the whinging about spam, my gmail is spam-free, and my old hotmail catches 99 out of 100 spams.
I don't see what the big problem is really. All the pushes that have been made against the o-so-terrible-trolls have been made by corporations trying to protect themselves, half of the time justifiably and half of the time to just shut people up they don't like.
All in all I see no compelling reason to change the current system. I do see many abuses by sue-happy corporations and by sinister governments if provisions are put into place to link comments with people.
No matter what you say, as soon as you develop a system to filter and track you will have an army of moral crusaders trying to ban various things. And I have to tell you, I much prefer a couple of trolls, and the opportunity to hear the dirt on corporations (false info can get corrected very quickly on the net, I am dubious as to the effectivenss of a slander against a reputable company) than to have my porn supply cut off, have swear words filtered out, and having the potential for CIA and other intelligence agencies to start profiling "dissenters" via automation as they have done (totally unjustifiably) many times in the past.
So no. Let some artificial legal structures aka "corporations" have a cry that "they" (they aren't human) are being slandered (when was the last time you saw one go out of business due to slander?). I am sick of corporate sponsored law, there is no reason to de-anonymise the net.
Viva the trolls!
"The Internet is not your personal stump to beat up people."
The hell he says. It's called the First Amendment, firstly, and secondly, speech is what the Internet is FOR! It's not a communications system run for the benefit of corporations. It's a protocol. It was designed to let people speak -- once upon a time, the people who couldn't speak because a cult or a country would destroy them for voicing the truth. No more...
There are laws covering slander and libel. If a business is suing people regardless of actual illegality, then we have a abuse of the courts a la Scientology. Sue to make people shut up; failing that, bankrupt and ruin them as a warning to others.
All freedom of speech means is that the Government won't try to stop your (should be political) speech.
It seems like the idea here is that you should have freedom of speech if you're criticizing the government, but not if you're criticizing a business.
Considering the large number of people I run across who espouse the belief the government should have as little power as possible and businesses should take up any important functions instead, this would seem in the long run to maybe lead to not having any meaningful free speech at all.
"Libel" doesn't really have anything to do with it. Did you read the article? You know, the one this comments section is supposedly talking about? The lawsuit doesn't even specify exactly which comments that seobook.com is being sued for, and the claims which were likely to have sparked the lawsuit seem to have been corroborated by other sources. In this light it seems likely that the comments prompting the lawsuit at worst are legitimate criticisms of this trafficpower company, and at best are incorrect but honestly meant by the people who posted them.
Ever heard the term "chilling effects"? The problem is we have to err on either one side or the other. Either we are too cautious with freedom of speech and allow bad information to flourish, or we are too strict and dissuade people from exercising their freedom. There isn't a middle ground. The thing is though that if we err on the side of caution, nothing is hurt. People can make up their own minds and decide not to trust an "anonymous coward" on the internet unless what they say can be corroborated. However if we err on the other side, and wind up silencing people because they cannot risk the consequences of having spoken, then there is no way to repair this. Those comments are lost forever.
There is very little consequence to such actions so people aren't inhibited.
Ah yes, this horrible environment in which there are no negative consequences for expressing oneself... how will civilization survive.
Timely Warnings...Blogging Can Get You Sued!
No, blogging cannot get you sued, nor can owning and firing a gun.
You're confusing the following:
1. Anyone can sue you - it may be tossed out of court, you may win damages, but anyone can sue you who has standing with the court(s). Especially in America.
2. Owning and firing a gun is illegal in most city limits of America. Even if you eventually win the case, you can still be arrested and held for up to 72 hours without charges being filed, under many pretexts.
3. However, just because 1 and 2 are true doesn't mean you're not right in your basic premise that bloggers being sued for something another person posted is highly unlikely to ever successfully result in a negative ruling by the courts on the merits of the case.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
It's not a problem, but merely a behavior.
The problem is (and long has been) the degree to which we've tended to believe the printed word, no matter the source. The Internet's gradually improving that situation.
Seeing bad movies only encourages them. Watch responsibly
One of the great problems with the Internet currently is that there are so many anonymous cowards, who troll, spam and lie. There is very little consequence to such actions so people aren't inhibited.
Speaking as an AC I'd like to point out that just as many people with login names spam and lie and make things up. Some percentage of ANY population is basically a lying scumbag and the larger that population the more likely those people will be there. I do agree with you that there are generally little consequence to many actions on the net and consider this the Wild West of the internet. But then if accountability actually meant anything wouldn't you Americans do something about your sad politilcal snafu?
I think that you are missing the point. You are right: "...that there are so many anonymous cowards, who troll, spam and lie." And the comments on the blog seem to indicate that the individual who wrote them is one of that group. But that does not mean that an owner of a blog should be held liable for what other people write to him - or even in continuation of his own ideas. He can (and should) be held responsible for what he has said, but he should not (nor should anyone) be held responsible for the comments of others.
~Why even bother.
Some random commenter in the dark depths of the internet should be able to say whatever they damn well please . . .
The internet has precious few dark depths. If I was considering buying a Traffic-Power product, I might do a google search on them in order to find out more. Google is good at dredging the dark depths, and I would likely stumble upon the blog in question and it might affect my decision. Hence, the speech should reasonably be subject to libel laws etc.
sigs are hazardous to your health
Well, what do you call abusive legal games? Threatening lawsuits that will supposedly be dropped, if only you'd start playing nice with the evil bastards that you harmed by posting the truth. And if not, they'll sue you for everything you're worth. Still without an actual statement of what they consider harmful.
Sounds almost like Traffic Power is a company with a useless service. That Traffic Power knows they have a useless service. And that Traffic Power specifically trains their representatives in lying to avoid painful questions. (Why they aren't listed on Google, do your tricks actually work, etc.)
So yeah, a company with absolutely no credibility sues someone, with the intention of driving legitimate comments offline by bankrupting anyone willing to share the truth and yeah, people do start talking about free speech being murdered.
This is as blatant as that Robert Novak thief who ran Pet Warehouse and sued people for reporting that he sent them dead pets. Assuming people can't afford to fight these bastards in court, I really wish they'd curb stomp them in real life. What good can ever come from letting a complete bastard like Max D Spilka (Traffic Power liar/lawyer) walk the earth? Sure, behind every dirty lawyer is a dirty client, but that client isn't capable of ruining hundreds of lives without the lawyer - imho the lawyers are the ones we should target. Worthless wastes of skin. Exactly what you'd expect from a company whose business is tricking people into going to sites that don't really offer what they want.