Bloggers Immune From Suits Against Commenters

An anonymous reader writes "Suppose a commenter posts a libelous comment here at Slashdot. Can Slashdot and its owners be sued for defamation? A federal appeals court just held that no, they cannot. The court noted that a federal law was designed to ensure that 'within broad limits, message board operators would not be held responsible for the postings made by others on that board,' adding that, were the law otherwise, it would have an 'obvious chilling effect' on blogger speech."

Comments

Re:will they then

[drinkypoo]

Who is "they"? If the comment is linked to a [possible] crime, then sure, they will go after the poster. Which involves your access logs, your ISP's access logs, and possibly your database (if it will be helpful.)

If someone should post copyrighted material in a comment, then the first thing they do is send you a takedown notice. Then they can come after you if you are not responsive.

P.S. "file suit", not "follow suit".

How About Other Content?

[Bones3D_mac]

Having previously hosted Think Secret's message boards for a few years, I'm no stranger to having companies like Adobe and Apple threatening to sue over content a user posted into a thread. In many instances where this occurred the content in question (usually pictures, screenshots or diagrams) were not even hosted on our site or any of our servers, but were linked from external sites where the content had originated. In addition, I was sometimes even threatened over mere links to other sites that were displaying the objectionable content in question. (Though, in those cases, I was able to simply refuse to remove the links on the grounds that I could not be held responsible for content hosted on third party websites.)

So, would this imply that a site is protected from such harrassments should a user post a trade secret into the forums without the knowledge of the forum owner?

Re:Hall of fame story

[Harmonious Botch]

No, this suit does not change the scientology on slashdot issue.

The scientology text in question was copyrighted, and to copy without permission is a violation of copyright law. In TFA, the situation is different. The plantif alledges that several people ( mostly John Does ) bought options to sell the stock at a certain price, defamed it on the forum, then after the price dropped, cashed their options for a profit. Apparently some people did defame it, and some people did profit from the drop in vale. But the court found that the plantiff was unable to prove that any of them were the same people. So, now law was proven to have been broken.

Re:Hall of fame story

[Jim Hall]

I think it still would have happened. From the story you linked to (emphasis mine):

Last Saturday a comment was posted here by an anonymous reader that contained text that was copyrighted by the Church of Scientology. They have since followed the DMCA and demanded that we remove the comment. While Slashdot is an open forum and we encourage free discussion and sharing of ideas, our lawyers have advised us that, considering all the details of this case, the comment should come down. Read on to understand what this means.

This is the first time since we instituted our moderation system that a comment has had to be removed because of its content, and believe me nobody is more broken hearted about it than me. It's a bad precedent, and a blow for the freedom of speech that we all share in this forum. But this simply doesn't look like a case we can win. Our lawyers tell us that it appears to be a violation of Copyright law, and under the terms of the DMCA, we must remove it. Else we risk legal action that would at best be expensive, and potentially cause Slashdot to go down temporarily or even permanently. At the worst, court orders could jeporadize your privacy, and we would be helpless to stop it.

So in that case, the issue was copyright infringement and issuance of the DMCA. Nothing about defamation, which is what this new case is about (note: I cannot RTFA, because it is slashdotted. But going by the summary, I believe this is correct.)

Re:Scientology

[quanticle]

First, there is a previous reference. Second, this doesn't affect the scientology case in any way. The text posted in the scientology thread is copyrighted, and the Church of Scientology sued under the DMCA, which this ruling does not affect.

This case just affects libel, in which you falsely allege wrongdoing against someone for the purpose of destroying their reputation.

That was DMCA Takedown

[Anonymous Coward]

Scientology (technically, the RTC, one of the many official Scientology corporations) used a DMCA Takedown notice to force Slashdot to remove some copies of their OT ("Operating Thetan") materials. I believe it might have been OT3. Fortunately, they're widely available online if you really want to read that crap.

In my biased opinion, they're a rather insidious bunch. From what I've read of them online, it appears that they slowly isolate and condition people psychologically (which is why they hate psychologists--such people would recognize what they're doing). Once they get people to the point where they have pretty much everything they own invested in the organization, only then do they let them see the space opera stuff so they can complete their self-delusion. That is, unless they're the cynical type who was only pretending the whole time, who is willing to lie about having psychic powers and... Well, let's just say they might become someone rather like L. Ron Hubbard :-)

Re:Let's test it out....

[cpt kangarooski]

To ensure that posters don't get sued since opinions can't be lible.

What makes you think that? It depends on your jurisdiction, of course, since defamation laws can vary quite a lot, but at least with regard to federal defamation law, opinions can indeed be libelous. Also, merely using a preface like 'my opinion is' is not a magic incantation that is going to protect you no matter what follows it; simply saying that something is an opinion doesn't make it an opinion, and no court is stupid enough to be tricked in that manner.

You should read a very on-point Supreme Court case: Milkovich v. Lorain Journal Co., in which the Court clearly stated that as a matter of First Amendment law, there is no categorical opinion defense.