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The CDA Is Dead, But States Are Trying To Revive It
oliphaunt writes "This week at The Legality, Tracy Frazier has an article discussing the damage that can be done by anonymous online comments. While regulars here are familiar with infamous bits of Net censorship like the Fishman Affidavit fiasco, and everyone has been an anonymous coward at least once or twice, some of you may not know about the conflict between Heide Iravani and AutoAdmit.com. Heide eventually filed a lawsuit because the first result for a Google search on her name brought up anonymous comments on AutoAdmit that accused her of carrying an STD and sleeping her way to the top of her class. The Communications Decency Act was supposed to prevent this kind of thing, but an injunction prevented it from ever being enforced and eventually the Supreme Court killed it. Should the law be changed?" The article links to a proposal from last summer in the New Jersey legislature that would institute a DMCA-like takedown regime for allegedly defamatory content posted on a Web site, and would allow aggrieved parties to demand the identity of anonymous posters without a subpoena. No indication of how that proposal fared. Also linked is a recent North Carolina proposal that would criminalize the act of defaming someone using an electronic medium. This proposal shields Web sites from liability and explicitly does not apply to anonymous speech.
Defamation should be a civil matter.
what's her website number?
If people know that "bad" comments are taken off the Internet, and the Government is there to protect us, then the Government is giving weight to everything that's out there. Unfortunately, the Government can't take down every bad thing out there. Net result is that the effort to protect people just makes things worse. As long as the Government keeps its hands off, and people understand that there is no Thought Police on the Internet, then they will be dismissive of most unsubstantiated anonymous claims, and they can cause no harm. Legislators, please take the day off on this one. Everybody will be better off.
I didn't realise Heide Iravani might have had an STD until she fought so hard to stop people talking about it.
Considering something like 70% of people carry HPV the odds are in your favour that you're telling the truth whenever you say someone has an STD.
... for "allegedly" anything. They should be able to prove their case in court, or STFU.
While the current situation is not quite "prior restraint", it DOES have a chilling effect on free speech, in that speech can be censored by merely alleging that it is infringing something. That is wrong, plain and simple.
Doing this only legitimizes anonymous comments. People should be made aware that when someone says something online that does NOT mean it is true. So called "defamatory" speech should never be criminalized anyhow. At worse, it is a civil wrong.
Pretty much all online speech is anonymous. That which is not and involves a person saying something about another, they will already take down the offending content if they are made aware they are going to be sued and do not believe they can substantiate (i.e., defend) their comment because civil law does apply. So no new law is needed. These kinds of laws only help incompetent rich people anyways. They protect the aristocracy (mis)using the government's resources to keep their "reputations" clean. See countries outside the United States for example.
As it stands, Section 230 of the CDA offers a more or less complete safe harbor immunity to any "provider of an interactive service" for law-infringing content, with copyright currently being the only exception.
I could care less about making it easier to out anonymous commentators, and in fact oppose any effort to make that easier. But on the other hand, illegal content is illegal content, and once a provider is notified that they are hosting illegal content, I have no objection with a requirement to take it down or assume liability for it.
Philip Sandifer's academic website
Is to just insult people directly.
It's FAR more hurtful!
In the 'Fisherman' link in this article it goes to an old story by CT, which links to the ACLU on tops for writing elected officials. That link is out of date, the updated link is http://www.aclu.org/files/gen/13516res20021209.html
But seriously, what with the way that skilled people can manipulate data, others assuming identities, the semi-secure networks.
We're just not there yet, where you can have 100 percent certainty your communicating who you think you are, or that a post was made by who they claim to be.
The cost of doing an audit trail has to be pretty expensive, and even then... you can't be sure.
CSI and NCIS aside someone with malevolent intent pretty much has free reign to a point against regular folks.
Whereas corporations and governments budget the expense of tracking and litigating.
Until we all have inserted chips to enable us to logon or some kind of biometric verification.
I can call Bob a poopoo head and Bob has to live with the possibility that someone will believe that he is a poopoo head.
I didn't realise Heide Iravani might have had an STD until she fought so hard to stop people talking about it.
Yes, but prior to this Slashdot story, you didn't even know Heide's name. On the other hand, current and possible future employers might do a Google search and find this, and well as potential love interests. Posts like the ones that Heide is upset about may not bother typical Slashdotters, but we have very thick skin here. Heide should be able to this type of harassment, as it significantly impacts her life.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
There is this concept called considering the source. If the poster is anonymous and makes claims without backing them up, then a person would have to be an idiot to ascribe any weight to them. Case closed.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
does this Heide Iravani pretty much sleep with anybody in order to get to the top? If so, I would like to interview her...
I am open source, and Linux baby!
Oh no..not the CDA!
Anonymous speech should be specifically protected on the web, end of story. Full stop. No debate. Anyone in any position of power who thinks otherwise should be dragged out of office for positing such a stupid notion.
If someone wants to complain anonymously about someone else it should equally be that person's right (not to mention responsibility) to publicly refute any claims they disagree with. There's no sense in whining about a search engine coming up with "undesirable" things about you -- get off your lard butt and post some information that IS desirable about yourself, if it bothers you so damn much. Otherwise, realise that people other than you are going to take hateful anonymous comments on the Internet at exactly face value: Namely, zero. Or close to it.
This is not about a slew of DMCA-style takedowns.
Everyone has a right to keep defamatory content out of the first 30 or so Google hits on their name. This is just basic.
Obviously, they still need to prove it's defamatory, but it is a problem.
Good luck, i'm behind seven proxies
Do you mean her website's address? Perhaps you mean her phone number?
That's what I was saying, so where's the problem?
If the statements are false (truth is an absolute defense against libel), then show that they are false, and get the statements removed. In that order. But allowing someone to censor speech on mere allegations of wrongdoing is itself wrong.
Everyone has a right to keep defamatory content out of the first 30 or so Google hits on their name. This is just basic.
Obviously, they still need to prove it's defamatory, but it is a problem.
What if the content is factual? It might be defamatory, sure. But if someone has been a total douchebag sleazoid assclown to the point that the first couple of pages of search engine results are about what a total douchebag sleazoid assclown they are why should that be buried so that Mister or Mrs TDSA appears as pure as the driven snow?
See, now THAT is a libelous statement, and I can prove it. So you just committed a crime.
Of course it would be ludicrous to take your comment seriously. Nevertheless, if I wanted I could go to court, demonstrate (ridiculously easy to do) that I do not have AIDS, and not only have that statement removed, but probably also subpoena your IP address and whatever identity that leads to. If I really thought it worthwhile, you could have found yourself in deep shit.
While the judges themselves are employees of the government, most of the judicial apparatus is private, and operates under a market system. Suspect that your rights are being violated, but aren't quite sure what bit of legislation applies? Hire someone knowledgeable in the law to tell you. Need to file paperwork in a trial, but want to be sure that you did it correctly, and didn't miss something that could be important to your case? Hire someone who specializes in drafting legal papers to draft them for you. That's basically how a private market economy works: if you want something done that you can't do yourself, you hire someone to do it. However, there's a good case for making anything related to justice less privatized, in my opinion, as this tends to mean that the people who can afford to hire good consultants (lawyers) tend to get better results.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Usually (not always, but usually) when someone says "defamatory" they mean libel or slander, which are by definition untrue statements. I think the assumption here is that we were talking about libel.
FTFA:
... everyone has been an anonymous coward at least once or twice, ...
Speak for yourself. I've never done that.
Hey you guys! Did you hear that Heide Iravani has an STD? It's true, because I read it on the Internet!
In the real world, if I were to post anonymously that Zero_DGZ is a pedophile who visits Thailand to frequent child brothels, there are other anonymous idiots who would read this and post it as news. Once a few hundred people posted this juicy bit of information, people would cease to note it was anonymous and think "Google says lots of people think that...", and before long you would get a visit from the FBI.
It may be that anonymous statements of opinion, as in "I think ZeroDgZ is sociopathic", should be protected, but statements presented as facts that are actually lies should not. Using anonymity to protect against suit for libel should also not be protected (it is illegal in many countries as regards print media at least).
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
I think that people get a little too excited whenever regular old actionable offenses happen in a room with a computer. Just because libel happens on the Internet doesn't make it any different for legal purposes than libel in any other medium. Neither does it elevate speech for it to occur on the Internet.
For example, an anonymous post on a web page regarding this chick and her alleged std situation is essentially the same as someone having spray-painted graffiti to that effect on the side of a building. Now, IANAL, but I believe that if the woman in question could prove that the graffiti had a negative effect on her reputation (I think the key is that she'd have to prove some sort of financial harm, like losing her job or something along those lines) AND was false, then the owner of the building would not only have to remove the graffiti but would probably also have to compensate her for her losses.
The only way it would be criminal is if the poster posted something with the intent to provoke a criminal act against the woman in question, like posting her address and license plates on westealcars.org or something like that.
This unbiased moderation brought to you by the Porcine Aviation Group!
"then a person would have to be an idiot to ascribe any weight to them"..judging by the economic news over the past two years, you just described about 95% of business executives, including the people who hire and fire people. In fact the terms idiots and morons doesn't even come close, we really don't have any good description with a single noun to describe the sheer arrogance, incompetence and believing in the economic tooth fairy that has gone on now with these business "elite" folks.
And this therefore makes it a serious problem, one of many right now because of those people.
The economy is tanking hard, and for the most part, the same megagreedidiots who caused all the mess are *still in charge* making decision after decision. And the bigger the idiot, the more they are getting bailed out by putting the tax payers in debt for the next 50 years (some big number).
Yes I have been a victim of this. Some moron who shares my name is a moderately infamous white supremacist.
Needless to say he has a prominent wikipedia and google presence.
I have actually lost business due to this, as someone looked him up, thought it was about me, and wrote smearing emails about me to my client. I cleared it up with the client but the FUD damaged the relationship and no further business ensued. And who knows, maybe it has cost me job interviews as well.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, as they say.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Let me correct a few misconceptions in the underlying article and the post. 1. The CDA isn't dead; it's alive and well and thriving. Only 2 constitutionally repugnant sections were struck down by the US Supreme Court. 2. They were struck down in 1997, not in 2007. 3. Communication on the internet is not the "wild west"; it is subject to the same laws as the rest of the world. If someone libels someone, they are held liable under the same principals. An anonymous libel is easier to trace on the internet than it would be in the brick and mortar world. 4. The suggestion that 'online slander' is an 'epidemic' is pure hype.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
I post anonymously because making website accounts is a pain in the ass. I think the "Coward" title is really unnecessary. "Lazy bastard" would be better.
Bad news:
Free speech on the Internet is dead.
Good news:
Heide Iravani will sleep with anyone! So, geeks of the world: get your clean t-shirt out of the closet (or at least the one that hasn't got Mountain Dew stains down the front), comb that long hair down (no need to break your yearly washing cycle though), and get it while she's hot!*
* Anonymous Coward will not take responsibility for any awkwardness, erectile dysfunction or venereal diseases caught during sex with that woman.
The problem is that the average person isn't going to have the proper resources to actually get anything done about it.
Then allow them to recover sufficient damages and penalties in civil court. You'll get plenty of lawyers lining up to take such cases on commission. There is no need to criminalize it.
Just another reason why capitalism fails.
By what bizarre reasoning do you connect capitalism with libel laws? Yes, you might face legal problems when saying something bad about a company in the US, but you can defend yourself and you still have a lot more freedom to do so than in any other form of government or economic system that has existed on this planet.
I mean, what do you propose instead? A centrally planned economy? Barter?
My real name happens to be Frosty Pist. Slashdot shall be hearing from my lawyers - for the tone of your post was quite derogatory and I am offended.
Everyone has a right to keep defamatory content out of the first 30 or so Google hits on their name. This is just basic.
No they don't and no one would dare dream about giving the president, for example, this benefit.
People don't get to decide what the results are of googling their name. Yes unfortunately things may come up but if a defamatory comment is true or holds some truth then why should that be hidden away? If it's false then yes you should be able to have it taken down (rather than shoved to the back of your search hits but you should be required to prove it's not true before it's taken down.
How can you have a "class" of capitalists when everyone is able to own property ?
It's possible if only members of the upper class have a reasonable chance of bootstrapping themselves into owning enough property to get anything done.
The only way that you can have slavery, even wage slavery, is when there is a presence of force. In modern times that force is almost always the government.
Unless the upper class applies force through said government. This is called rent seeking and regulatory capture.
If the statements are false (truth is an absolute defense against libel)
Not in all countries. In fact that principle might be unique to the USA, not sure.
If you were ever passed over for a position because of Internet search results, consider yourself lucky.
An employer who is going to base their hire/nohire decision on what they find in a Google search or a chat room is not the kind of employer you want to work for, trust me. If they're that petty and ignorant when it comes to staffing, imagine what the office politics and management style is going to be like! No thank you!
What makes you think people "will be dismissive of most unsubstantiated anonymous claims"? People believe the face of Jesus appears on tortillas. People believe 9/11 was really caused by Israel to get the US fired up against the Muslim world. People will believe all kinds of nonsense.
It takes very little to trash a person's character online. Of course no employer will pay attention to "she's a slut!" But no employer can afford to ignore "he was given a suspended sentence for child endangerment in Knox County, Kentucky in 1987." Will they really going to call up the Knox county courthouse and check? Of course they won't. They'll just toss that resume in the trash and move on.
I piss off bigots.
In my opinion, there is only one way to do this properly in the US. We hold a Constitutional Convention, and we reevaluate the first amendment in a modern context.
Any attempt to do this legislatively should be jealously struck down by the Supreme Court.
Oh, and Rush Limbaugh just launched his political action committee. He's going to try to bring down President Obama. So consider carefully whether you want the "protections" this law affords.
Honestly, I think we need to limit the speech rights of legal entities, to level the playing field with the humble individual. We need to state that a conglomerate of any kind, be it a union or a corporation, does not have the same rights as an individual, in order to strengthen individual rights.
The problem here is not free speech. It is that individual rights have been diluted by poor choices, and "common sense" has been diluted by collective organizations that have more rights than a person because they have more money. We need to reevaluate those choices, and stop looking at this as a zero sum game.
--
Toro
I don't know about that. When I went to college and slept through class, I usually ended up closer to the bottom.
Have gnu, will travel.
I wonder why we never had these problems with bathroom walls?
Just slapping "I think", or "In my opinion" in front of things doesn't magically make them immune from slander/libel laws.
i.e.
"Bob is an asshole - he is a rapist" -> probable libel as you make a claim of fact.
"Bob is an asshole - I think he is a rapist" -> still probable libel because it presupposes you have factual information to base that opinion on.
"Bob is an asshole" -> not libel; whether or not a person is indeed an asshole is subjective (even if a thousand people agree).
You could edit the wikipedia page. You could even sue the person writing the emails and include a section mentioning that on wikipedia. That would probably go a long way to preventing it happening again, as people looking you up would find the real info. If you are going for an interview, you could include in your application the information that the person shares your name but is not you.
http://marriedmansexlife.com/
I'm going to sue!
But seriously, if we combine this with that recent request for help from the fellow whose name brings up a paedophile ... surely we can sue for defamation of character whether the comments are referring to ourselves or not? That would be my logical conclusion without reading TFA.
I was trying to RTFA and so I clicked the link to the diffamatory posts that started it all, as offered by TFA :
http://www.thelegality.com/DOCUME%7E1/SAM/LOCALS%7E1/Local%20Settings/Temporary%20Internet%20Files/Content.Outlook/W39BHG8L/WWW.autoadmit.com
Yeah, great job guys, way to know how to use the Internet.
They wrote, falsely, that Heller has herpes and had bribed her way into Yaleâ"helped by a secret lesbian affair with the dean of admissionsâ"and that Iravani has gonorrhea, is addicted to heroin, and had exchanged oral sex with Yale Law Schoolâ(TM)s dean for a passing grade in civil procedure.
And? Is there anyone stupid enough in Yale or in related circles to believe such claims from our beloved Anonymous under such pseudonyms as "Cheese Eating Surrender Monkey, The Ayatollah of Rock-n-Rollah, hitlerhitlerhitler, Dirty Nigger, Sleazy Z, stanfordtroll, lonelyvirgin, Yalels2009, ak47"?
I mean shit, this is the fucking Internet, if you're gonna sue any Anonymous who's gonna call you a fag, then Kanye West has a whole world to sue.
You just got troll'd!
How about changing your name or adding a middlename?
Matt Hale?
Why would anyone want to revive the Child Detection Agency?! Don't they know laughter is 10 times more powerful then scream!
You guys dont see the forest for teh trees :
Heide's case is not about the veracity of anonymous internet claims.
Her case is about popularity & mob culture. Prospective employers and prospective
boyfriends read several bad stories on Google and conclude:
"Ouch. This girl is getting herself unpopular everywhere. Not someone I want
anywhere near my customers. Or have my friends taunt me about. Hell, I won't go
anywhere near her."
Really.
That is how 75% of people out there think!
They don't even care about the veracity of the claims!
You slashdot dudes are mostly outsiders, and you therefore fail to grasp this
crucial aspect of "normal" people's behaviour.
I would like to have a user name and not post as an anonymous coward but every time I sign up, slashdot never sends me the email with the password. I have done this at lesst 4 times now and still no user. So it is reasonable to expect other people to be having the same problems and resorting to only answer by the only means they have ie anonymous coward.
Better yet, I would write an article depicting the incident in detail and give it to the reporter of a local newspaper. The reporter can just double-check the veracity of your story, and then add his name to the story -- taking full credit for having written it. No full time reporter in his right mind would refuse a well written story about a topic like this.
And then, do as the parent says, write a blurb about it on Wikipedia, and cite the newspaper article as your source, because I really don't think that starting a lawsuit with someone who clearly made a mistake, would enhance your professional reputation in any way.
If anything, you should enlist that person's help, the one who made the mistake, in helping you make sure this thing doesn't surface again. When I worked for a big corporation, that's what our PR department eventually learned to do. Initially, whenever a false internet rumor started about our company, our PR department was just too slow to respond to it and the false rumor had already made its way around the world in a few hours. Eventually, our PR department enlisted the very help of the people who were the most vocal in spreading this kind of false information around, those types of people are usually the information hubs of some political activist communities, and if you can get those guys to be on your side -- they'll probably be the first ones most able to keep an eye out for it -- and they'll also be the most able to squash it again before it does even more damage to you.
Maybe this is why the Hollywood types are in a perpetual competition to come up with a stranger name than the last for their next kid.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
The "internet" is not 'fact'. The "internet" was never designed to be a factual database of public legal knowledge. It was designed for 1 thing, to share opinions and ideas, plain and simple.
When you get phished cause someone fooled you into logging into your supposed 'online banking account'. Do you sue the ISPs for not providing security that prevents that from 'ever' happening? No you don't, but now maybe it's time the people start holding ISPs accountable for items that happen on there systems?
Isn't impatience and lack of appreciation something that EVERY generation attributes to the next? http://trypu.com/