Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.