Slashdot Mirror
California Supreme Court OKs Web Libel Immunity
tanman writes "The California Supreme Court has ruled that websites which publish libelous text written by third parties cannot be sued for libel, reports CNN. The ruling found for the defendant, who was backed by the likes of Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. The internet service companies following the case feared that a ruling against the defendant would find them liable for content posted to their respective websites. Even though the court allowed this could have far-reaching consequences, they ultimately wanted this to be a question more for Congress than the courts." From the article: "The case centers on an opinion piece sent via e-mail to Ilena Rosenthal, a woman's health advocate who runs various message boards and promotes alternative medicine. The scathing missive, written by Tim Bolen, accused Dr. Terry Polevoy, of Canada, of stalking a Canadian radio producer and included various invectives directed at Polevoy and Dr. Stephen Barrett, of Pennsylvania. The two doctors operated Web sites devoted to exposing health frauds. After Rosenthal posted the piece to two newsgroups, Polevoy and Barrett sued her, Bolen and others for libel. The lawsuit accuses Rosenthal of republishing the information after being warned it was false and defamatory."
I'm no fan of lawsuits, and this decision is certainly a win for bloggers and most honest web publishers, but it sounds like the consequences of this decision were not well thought out (particularly in respect to the larger news organizations or tabloids).
Huh? Don't mind me, I'm just the new guy.
Publishers like newspapers, magazines and tv broadcasters are held liable for everything that their employees produce, post, and broadcast, so why shouldn't those who publish materials on the web be held to a similar standard? I'm guessing a lot of you all on /. have never been on the receiving end of serious, reputation-destroying, libel.
The rules shouldn't be changed, but rather people should understand that the definition of "publish" has in fact changed. Google, MS, Slashdot, etc. are not making an active, reviewed, and personal decision to make public whatever information they receive, but are acting as worlds in which such information is indexed and searched. We should make a distinction between active publication and passive publication. This would definitely solve a few problems.
What the hell's a "gewie?"
While the journalist in me applauds the decision, I have to wonder how far the underlying principle is going to be taken. If victims of libel can only pursue action against the original poster, what about cases where the original poster is anonymous? If no one but the original poster holds responsibility for the content -- even when it's known to be false and defamatory -- the opportunities for intentional, unfettered smear campaigns would seem to be enormous. ... I mean even more enormous than under our previous understanding of libel protections. I'm willing to pay an awful lot for free speech. Just hope I'm not on the receiving end of one of these smears.
Disclaimer: I can't RTFA for some reason, so I'm only going on the summary here.
Rashly assuming that said summary is accurate, this seems like a dangerous ruling. It basically says that deliberately and directly propagating harmful untruths about someone on-line is OK. Surely the whole point of defamation laws is surely that spreading those harmful untruths around is, well, harmful, and therefore should not be permitted (and compensation due if that law is broken)?
Now, you can make strong arguments both ways about the responsibilities and freedoms of on-line service providers in relation to content supplied by others but hosted on or transmitted by the service provider's systems.
On the one hand, there is the "common carrier" argument: service providers don't know about or control the content and therefore shouldn't be held responsible for it. By extension, you have to consider that even if they do receive a complaint from someone, that person may or may not be justified in making that complaint, and it may or may not be appropriate for the service provider to censor content on request.
On the other hand, this is a huge legal loophole, which basically says that on-line free speech is completely unaccountable, even in cases like defamation where the same speech is clearly held by law to be an abuse in other contexts. In the current legal and technological climate, where a lengthy court process is required to get anything done about anything yet the information can spread very fast, there's simply no effective way for someone who is damaged by this sort of action to defend themselves.
The only way forward, as far as I can see, is to introduce fast-track legal processes that can resolve fairly straightforward cases quickly and relatively informally, following a similar principle to small claims courts. Such a legal framework could deal with all kinds of on-line abuses -- not least defamation and copyright infringement -- in a timely fashion, without resorting to appointing service providers to the role of courts.
To me, this makes far more sense than either attempting technological controls (as copyright holders are doing with DRM, for example) or just giving up (as frequently seems the case with defamation, and people offering bad advice on regulated subjects like health, law and finances). Of course, a healthy dose of population education, so that people don't just believe anything they see (particularly from an anonymous source on a random web site or chat room) wouldn't do any harm, either.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I believe they are, though I'm not a lawyer - but the difference is that letters to the editor are, of necessity, read and vetted by the editorial staff. This means the decision to publish them is an implicit stamp of approval. Posts on the internet are not necessarily even seen by the people nominally "publishing" them.
/., for example, is not analogous to a traditional publisher. Holding slashdot liable for things said in comments would be more analogous to holding the paperboy liable for things said in the paper.
Really, the issue is what "publishing" means. Traditionally, publishing requires the publisher to select and edit stories which would then be pushed out to readers. The internet is different; a site like
My argument would be that the new publishers are the people hitting "submit" on the web form, since they're the ones selecting stories, validating them for truth (I crack me up), editing them for typos, and making the decision to make them public (i.e., "publish" them). Which is what this court decision seems to be in agreement with.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
The difference is whether there is a prior approval before publishing.
/. were liable for what the users posted, they would have to employ editors for screening all submissions before they appeared. They would need some legal training, and thus not be entirely cheap.
If sites like
Most advertisement funded or hobbyist sites would not be able to afford this. Which mean that the net would fall back into the hands of a few large media corporations, and most of the democratic potential of the Internet would get lost.
With regard to the victims of libel: If the person doing the libel is anonymous, they should consider if their trustworthiness is smaller than that of an anonymous cowards. If that is the case, they have already greater problems than the libel. If the person doing the libel is not anonymous, sue that person rather than the messenger.
Some years ago a malicious person posted a hate letter in Art Bell's name directed at the Filipino people. Art Bell is the host of a very popular late night radio talk show. CoastToCoastAM The latest article.
Needless to say the FBI got involved and traced the letter to an anonymous terminal at a US university. Art who now lives in Manilla, Phillipines with his Filipino wife is in a dangerous position because the newspapers keep printing it even after it's been proven to be a hoax. All he can do is decry the libel and get the paper to print retractions.
How do you control internet libel?
One might, but as is apparent from the labels of both the broad title of law (the "Communications Decency Act") and the specific applicable subsection ("Protection for "Good Samaritan" blocking and screening of offensive material"), encouraging free speech is the precise opposite of Congress' intent with this liability shield, it was indeed intended to discourage content that Congress didn't like. Congress just made the judgement lies which demonstrably cause specific harm to specific people were less undesirable than nekkid pictures on the internet, and decided to protect the former in the hopes that it might promote actions which would limit exposure to the latter.