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Court Rules Website Immune From Suit For Defamatory Posting
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "RipoffReport.com contained an admittedly defamatory posting, by one of its users, about a person who operated a Florida corporation providing addiction treatment services. Although the site was asked by the poster herself to remove the post, it refused. A Florida appeals court has ruled that the site is absolutely immune from suit (pdf), and cannot even be directed to remove the offending post, since under the Communications Decency Act (47 USC 230) 'no cause of action may be brought' against a provider of an "interactive computer service" based upon information provided by a 3rd party."
Sounds like she's learned a hard lesson in "think before you speak".
Ech. Have you ever read anything that passes for a "review" on RipOffReport.com? I don't think anyone has ever "thought before they spoke" in that place, if the rampant abuse that the English language takes in most of those reviews.
Cue the limp-wristed idiots who parrot that meme "but but languages evolve over time so this should always be acceptable!"
... do we have to pussify everything? "Languages evolve" so no one should ever be called out on their falure to handle language. Soccer games shouldn't keep score because the loser might get their feelings hurt. Stop coddling people, please. Most people are passive sheep who won't reach for worthy things on their own. They need to have a fire lit under their flabby asses before they will get off said flabby asses. The pain of failure and the humiliation of defeat are the standard, time-tested ways of igniting one. You really have no idea how many babies you are throwing out with the bathwater in your quest to make sure everyone always has narcissistic levels of self-esteem regardless of merit.
I wish they'd just come out and say "we hate that you have standards not because we think standards are a bad idea but because our low intelligence, or intellectual laziness, or inability to value anything not required of us means we wouldn't measure up to them! That might make us feel insecure and uncomfortable and we'd rather deal with that by lowering the standards everywhere than by making the slightest effort to improve." It would be so much more honest than all of these bullshit excuses for why educated people with no organic brain damage can't handle their own native language.
I mean fuck