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Court Rules Website Doesn't Have To Remove Defamatory Comments
DustyShadow writes "In the case of Blockowicz v. Williams, The US Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals refused to force Ripoff Report to remove allegedly defamatory comments posted by a user. The Ripoff Report has a well-publicized no-takedown policy, even if the author wants to remove his/her post, so the Ripoff Report refused. The Blockowiczs then claimed that the Ripoff Report violated FRCP 65(d) because the Ripoff Report was 'in active concert or participation' with the initial posters by refusing the injunction's removal order. The district court (and the Court of Appeals) disagreed with the Blockowiczs. Absent the 'active concert or participation,' the website was outside the court's control. Ripoff Report has released a statement concerning this case: 'In keeping with our core mission of protecting speech to the fullest extent of the law, we decided that it was not just our right but also our duty to ask questions and dig deeper before we could comply with such an order. Other sites claim they support free speech, but when the going gets rough, they will usually protect their bottom line rather than the Constitutional rights and freedoms this country was founded upon. Unlike other sites, even when the speech involved is harsh or negative and even if our position sometimes generates negative press for us, we think that the First Amendment requires us to put our principles before our pocketbook and fight against censorship.'"
Their position is that the first amendment prohibits others from forcing them to take the defamatory material down. Nowhere did they claim that any law required that they themselves had to leave it up. And, BTW, they apparently did make some minor edits to the article for the exact reason you cite.
I think you are misunderstanding this case, or didn't read the summary.
The government issued an injunction to remove comments from the web site that the site refused to obey, which puts it squarely in First Amendment territory. Their claim to be protecting the First Amendment is perfectly valid, as that amounts to government censorship of speech. From TFA:
Plaintiffs got an injunction that ordered defendants to remove defamatory content from the web that defendants had posted. When the defendants did not comply with the injunction, plaintiffs asked the court to enforce the injunction against Ripoffreport.com, the website on which some of the defamatory content appeared.
I don't know where you got the notion that this is just a private entity acting without any government intervention or involvement.
Some sites allow users to edit or remove their posts. Some, like Slashdot, do not. I'm not sure what would happen if I posted something so stupid that I felt the need to email a Slashdot mod to remove my comment, but people need to realize that just like screaming something foolhardy at work or in public, posting something on the internet never really goes away. Even if the mod did take down my comment, Google and a handful of other indexing sites have recorded it, etc.
If the statements posted by Bridezilla were factually false, the photographer probably has a case for libel. Perhaps some might think suing the bride after she recanted would be wrong- to those, I redirect to the first paragraph of my post.
Not quite true. SCOTUS has had several cases where ISPs and websites have been sued to have content taken down, where the ISP wasn't "in active concert" with the purveyors of the content. It allowed the hosting providers/webmasters/portals to be held harmless-- so long as the ISP/webmasters didn't edit or delete user-added content/comments, thus NOT providing a role that shapes the content. IF you don't touch the content, then you're not actively being involved. That's why the Seventh Circuit's language is what it is in this particular ligitation. IANAL, but understand the law and SCOTUS speech precendents well.
Of course, other US Agencies have taken down some websites based on another legal theory, but that hasn't been litigated yet. And in my opinion, they did this without probable cause and without due process.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.