You may be sued
If you maintain a blog and allow readers to post comments, you better be careful because you may face a lawsuit over these comments.
One example of such a lawsuit, which I picked up from WSJ, is the one filed by Traffic-Power.com against Aaron Wall, who maintains a blog on search engine optimization SEOBook.com. At issue are statements posted in the comments section of Mr. Wall’s blog that blasted tools sold by Traffic-Power.com.
Legal analysts said that courts generally have held that the operators of computer message boards and mailing lists cannot be held liable for statements posted by other people, and blogs might be viewed in a similar light.
I am not familiar with the details of this lawsuit but my personal belief is that this and similar lawsuits are baseless and should not have been filed in the first place. If you (the entity filing the lawsuit) disagree with statements posted on a website, you either prove that those statements are wrong, or, please, don’t try to sue the website just because they, or someone who left a comment there, disagree with you or claims something against you. Prove their claims are wrong, publicly. if you can’t, then their claims are most probably right.
Comments anyone?
Related links:
The Wall Street Journal article
Related articles:
Filed in Technology on 31 Aug 05 | Tags: blog
I’m no lawyer but I think anytime you see comments that say “ex-employee” or something to that effect you might be opening yourself up to potential problems. It would seem to indicate you’ve done something to validate their claim of employment.
Also if someone says – hey don’t use my name – it could mean a few things none of which are good and none of which you want to put yourself in the middle of.
Slashdot has picked up the story too and is currently being discussed to death. Check it out here.
Interesting topic!
In traditional print publishing, the editor is legally responsible for what he puts in the paper, regardless of whether they wrote it. That is why they do careful fact-checking before printing letters to the editor. . . .
It will be interesting to see if the courts apply the same standards of journalism to web publishing, like forums and blogs.
It looks like the liability for defamation can depend on the country where the parties live:
http://dba-oracle.com/oracle_news/2005_9_1_liable_blog_comments.htm
For example, this Australian libel web site notes that linking-to or otherwise republishing a libel, is itself a libel:
In principle republication of a defamatory statement is itself a libel.
It is no defence to say that what is published is merely a repetition of a statement that was previously published and that did not incur prosecution. In principle every person who repeats or republishes a defamatory statement faces the same liability. . .
Australian law is an adversarial system, in which a defamatory statement is assumed to be false and must therefore be defended. Truth was allowed as a defence in defamation for first time in the UK under the 1835 Libel Act but – in practice – using that defence can be difficult.