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.'"

Comments

Power of the pulpit

[the_rev_matt]

"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.

Re:Power of the pulpit

[ifwm]

It's not freedom of speech that's the issue here.

It's freedom from the consequences of your speech that is being debated.

Re:Power of the pulpit

[Eil]

"The Internet is not your personal stump to beat up people."

You mean, if I were to say this:

"Daniel Perry is a two-bit fucktard who plainly doesn't understand what the Internet is all about. He spreads lies, deceit, and only wants to sue people for their hard-earned money while he accepts fat checks from his clients. What a worm, that guy."

That would mean Slashdot might be held liable in a lawsuit, amiright?

Also, if you're not allowed to make negative comments about people on the Internet, then about 98% of all blogs ever written would be in violation of the law.

Re:Power of the pulpit

[computational super]

Sadly I don't seeing anyone fighting it.

Actually, Ian Clarke is - but unfortunately, he rarely gets much support... any mention of Freenet here, for example, turns into "You don't care about Chinese dissidents, you're just enabling child pornographers". Well, forget Chinese dissidents; I'm more concerned about "corporate dissidents". How long before people who post book reviews on Amazon.com get sued for slander when they say that a book's no good? Freenet has the capability to turn the internet back into what it ought to have been from the start.

Re:Power of the pulpit

[glassjaw rocks]

"That would mean Slashdot might be held liable in a lawsuit, amiright?"

Possibly. But I doubt it.

"Also, if you're not allowed to make negative comments about people on the Internet, then about 98% of all blogs ever written would be in violation of the law."

You do know the difference between a negative comment and libel, don't you?

libel:
      1. A false publication, as in writing, print, signs, or pictures, that damages a person's reputation.
      2. The act of presenting such material to the public.

Re:Power of the pulpit

[IgnoramusMaximus]

Freenet does have its uses in free, democratic countries. For example, it probably makes a good early warning sign - if the government starts clamping down on its use,

I hope you have you ammo boxes handy as this is bound to happen rather soon. Freenet use is at this point nearly completely restricted to child pornography and a small number of die-hard believers in the concept of Freenet, since the supposed target audience, the dissidents, would be nuts to use it, for the reasons I described. This distribution of contents makes Freenet a sitting duck for the "Think Of The Children" political charlatans, and it also makes any defense of Freenet impossible in a typical political context. I really think that Freenet is such a wrong-headed implementation of a sounds-good-on-paper idea that it does far more harm than good to the struggle for preservation of Freedom of Speech and other Liberties.

hmm...

[justin12345]

'The Internet is not your personal stump to beat up people.'

This guy has obviously never been to /.

Libel or 1st Amendment?

[emidln]

Maybe I don't understand, but if this isn't libel then isn't it covered under the 1st amendment's free speech clause?

Dangerous Territory

[Nerdfest]

I'd spout off some disparaging comments about lawyers, but am now afraid to ....

Re:Dangerous Territory

[Dibson]

Don't be afraid. Didn't you read the article? Insult the lawyers and /. will take the blame!

I wondered this as I blasted a business...

[bgfay]

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?

Re:I wondered this as I blasted a business...

[kraada]

Whether or not you actually are liable, you can (and may well) be sued for libel and defamation of character. Even if you're innocent, the question arises: how willing are you to defend yourself? How many lawyers will you hire for how many years just to prove you didn't do it?

The lawsuit isn't bad because the website is going to get convicted it's because if these suits are going to continue popping up websites will not be allowed to let comments be posted due to the cost of proving themselves innocent.

Being a litigious society sucks because of the amount of time and money wasted on lawyers. And that's really 99% of the reason why we should care.

How dumb.

[Poromenos1]

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.

but apparently...

[kevin lyda]

...the court systems are there to beat people up with.

Horse pucky

[fatcatman]

'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.

Re:Horse pucky

[ScentCone]

The people filing this lawsuit are nothing more than schoolyard bullies

Unless they're right. In which case they're making sure that another party isn't abusing the first amendment and BSing while presenting nonsense as fact. It could be done by either party, for any reason, and the only issue is whether or not the person posting his comments, or allowing the other comments to stay up on his web site, are truthful.

The truth may indeed be extremely negative, but who cares, as long as it's the truth. But a lot of people post demonstrable lies in blogs, hoping that the search engines will pick up on it, etc. The person being lied about should have recourse, whether large or small.

In this case, how have you made your determination about the truthfullness (and thus, non-libelous) nature of the web content in question? I didn't see enough to go on, so you must know more.

Its a sad day

[834r9394557r011]

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.

WTF

[Sheepdot]

'The Internet is not your personal stump to beat up people.'

I beg to differ.

Hurting someone else's feelings is my spaghetti-god-given right.

Huh?

[TheAwfulTruth]

"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. :(

Re:Two Slugs Battle It Out...

[truckaxle]

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.

I don't get it

[Overzeetop]

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.

Freedom of speech comes with responsibility.

[the_raptor]

Seriously when did people get this idea that you should be able to say whatever you want and never have any consequences? All freedom of speech means is that the Government won't try to stop your (should be political) speech. It doesn't mean you can libel and slander people anonymously consequence free.

Why should you be allowed to go around staring negative rumours about your business competitors? How would you like your boss to lie to a future employer that you got fired for drug abuse or for having kiddie porn?

People want rights but never seem to understand that responsibilities are just as important for the functioning of society.

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.

Re:Freedom of speech comes with responsibility.

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

Re:Freedom of speech comes with responsibility.

[moviepig.com]

One of the great problems with the Internet currently is that there are so many anonymous cowards, who troll, spam and lie.

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.

Re:Freedom of speech comes with responsibility.

[avi33]

Mr. Wall, 25 years old, who runs an Internet marketing business from his home, said the suit "is so vague in nature that it's hard to know what I'm being sued for."

To use your own logic, there are well-traveled avenues that you could use to prevent your boss from lying about you. They are libel and slander laws, and if it happens with company compliance, you could set yourself up to never work again.

This guy is being served with a murky lawsuit, and the plantiff's counsel offered to drop the whole thing if he removed every bit of referring content to their company. If their counsel really did their homework, they would have documented each and every infraction on his site, included it in the suit, and asked for specific remedies (whether it be money, removal of content, etc.) Upon receiving it, he could get useful legal counsel, and either fight it or comply. Instead, they're trying to intimidate him into silence.

That would be like Microsoft suing slashdot over critical posts and offering to drop the whole thing if every reference to MS was removed from this site.

Maybe before you try the Uncle Ben defense (With great power comes great responsibility) you should RTFConstitution.

Re:Freedom of speech comes with responsibility.

[King_TJ]

Well, the problem *then* becomes, how do you *know* "nobody is listening"?

It's entirely possible (and has already happened) that someone creates a "blog" site intended to serve as sort of an electronic version of a personal diary, accessible anyplace they have Internet access, and mainly intended for a few friends or family members to use if they care to join in. But someone stumbles onto it, discovers what they view as an interesting conversation about something of significance - and starts directing heavy traffic to it. All of a sudden, this person's formerly "unknown" comments have big influence.

Therefore, you have to consider the *potential audience* for your words before you type them - not your current actual audience. When you host a web site on the Internet, the *potential* is always quite large.

If you want to write comments that truly aren't even intended to reach an audience beyond a few selected people, you'd password protect it.

Re:Freedom of speech comes with responsibility.

[Mithrandir]

Please define "reasonable person".

There is a defined legal concept known as "The Common Man" that Common Law countries use. I am specifically aware of the concept in the UK, Canada and Australia.

Loosely put, the definition is "if the common man would not find that to be a reasonable action, you loose". For example, going swimming in a large storm on a beach with signs saying beach closed due to dangerous conditions, a person going swimming and breaking their neck has no legal grounds for suing. It very effectively stops so many of the stupid lawsuits you see here in the USA before they get anywhere.

The Law is Not So "Murky" Here: See CDA sec. 230

[Froomkin]

The Communications Decency Act, sec. 230(c)(1) says,

No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.

And, in sect. 230 (f)(3),

"The term ''information content provider'' means any person or entity that is responsible, in whole or in part, for the creation or development of information provided through the Internet or any other interactive computer service.

Why a blog with comments would be treated differently from, say, a BBS or a chat room escapes me. And I teach this stuff for a living. So much for the defamation claims.

The trade secret claim is a little harder. It's probably the case that Congress didn't have trade secrets in mind when it wrote sec. 230. On the other hand, if you read the full text of sec. 230 you will see that Congress intended fairly broad protection; in sec. 230(f)(3) it certainly wrote in very broad terms. In law there are few certainties until after a court rules, but I think the balance here points towards a finding of non-liability both on CDA grounds and traditional trade secret grounds (where innocent receivers of information, and especially journalists who receive information, are not usually liable).

Exactly

[Red Flayer]

"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.

Well, well, well

[tetrode]

This trafficy-power seems to have a nice web site.

Very decent.

Look! there is even a mailinglist I can subscribe to. Quick let's do it before someone else does it. ... fill in the e-mail address and clicks on subscribe ...

Hmm, what do I get for a page:

http://65.41.209.68/~lisa/?type=s

File not found!

The URL you have loaded has not been found on this server.

Please alert the system administrator if you believe you have reached this in error.

What a losers

Not the nicest SEO company

[Mr. Flibble]

As seen on this discussion and this website.

Reminds me a bit of a certan guy at SCO...

Psssst!

[Anonymous Coward]

the_raptor (652941) has kiddie porn and uses the marijuana. Tell a friend.

For something to be libel

[Sycraft-fu]

It must meet three criteria:

1) The statements you make must be false statements. Truth is the ultimate defence against a libel suit. No matter how bad something is that you say, if it's true, it's not libel.

2) You had to know the statements were false. If you believed you were making true statements, that is also a defence against libel. Of course that's a little harder to prove, gets in to he-said, she-said to try and prove if you knew or not.

3) The statements had to be made with the intent to cause harm. If they were made as a joke, it's not libel. Again, gets in to an argument of if you really intended to cause harm.

So, if your statements are true, and provably so, you are fine. If not it gets a little more unclear.

Now please note, they could still sue you, even if their suit had no merit. That shit happens ALL the time. Even if everything you said was true you could still be sued. Doesn't mean you'd be liable for anything if you defended yourself, but you'd still have to defend yourself.

No, it doesn't

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Editorial control

[Per Abrahamsen]

I believe part of the answer lies in editorial control. If you delete comments on your blog, you may be conisderet an editor rather than a common carrier, and become responsible for the content.

Another case is if you refuse to remove illegal material from your blog, when pointed out to you, you may become responsible.

Of course, if you do remove the material, it may be viewer as editorial control, so it is damned if you do, and damned if you don't.