Blog Faces Lawsuit Over Reader Comments 364
Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "In a legal case being watched closely by bloggers, an Internet company has sued the owner of a blog for comments posted to his site by readers, the Wall Street Journal Online reports. Traffic-Power.com, which sells tools for boosting Web traffic, sued Aaron Wall, age 25, over statements posted in the comments section of Wall's search-engine-optimization blog, SEOBook.com. (Wall also has posted about the case.) 'Legal analysts said the case falls into somewhat murky legal territory, but that Mr. Wall may have some protection from liability under federal law,' WSJ.com says. 'Courts generally have held that the operators of computer message boards and mailing lists cannot be held liable for statements posted by other people. Blogs might be viewed in a similar light, they said.' However, Daniel Perry, a lawyer who has followed the case, says that Wall's case is complicated by his own negative comments about Traffic-Power, which could be seen as a competitor to his site. 'To be candid, he sort of moved into this moving propeller,' Perry said. 'The Internet is not your personal stump to beat up people.'"
Very interesting legal complications (Score:3, Interesting)
Jerry
http://www.cyvin.org/ [cyvin.org]
Re:Power of the pulpit (Score:1, Interesting)
Actually, that's one of the greatest strengths of the internet. True freedom of speech.
That's the way it was. Unfortunately with the profitability of the Internet as a whole, the U.S. government wants to "own" it and therefore make it follow it's rules... Sadly I don't seeing anyone fighting it.
Freedom of speech comes with responsibility. (Score:5, Interesting)
Why should you be allowed to go around staring negative rumours about your business competitors? How would you like your boss to lie to a future employer that you got fired for drug abuse or for having kiddie porn?
People want rights but never seem to understand that responsibilities are just as important for the functioning of society.
One of the great problems with the Internet currently is that there are so many anonymous cowards, who troll, spam and lie. There is very little consequence to such actions so people aren't inhibited.
Re:WTO (Score:2, Interesting)
Some guy lives in France that doesn't allow hate speech from the stuff that happened in WWII; the guy reads the hate speech deemed illegal in France posited by someone that lived in Russia and the server resides some place in China.
Ok, so we go after that bad guy and got him shutdown (I don't know which bad it was but it is done).
Now the same guy that lives in Russia has very strict pornography laws. He then reads the web site of the guy that read the hate speech (whom is a museum curator) and it has liberal pictures of nudity deemed art in France. However, in Russia it is pornography (just say). Now whom do we go after? Ok so now we have a guy in Russia and a guy in France incarcerated; soon this launches WWIII due to the mess and the world is doomed - problem solved?
Re:Power of the pulpit (Score:5, Interesting)
"The Internet is not your personal stump to beat up people."
You mean, if I were to say this:
"Daniel Perry is a two-bit fucktard who plainly doesn't understand what the Internet is all about. He spreads lies, deceit, and only wants to sue people for their hard-earned money while he accepts fat checks from his clients. What a worm, that guy."
That would mean Slashdot might be held liable in a lawsuit, amiright?
Also, if you're not allowed to make negative comments about people on the Internet, then about 98% of all blogs ever written would be in violation of the law.
interpreting communications decency act (Score:2, Interesting)
like the article says, this really is still a murky area of the law--tho some decisions (like the Zeran one mentioned) seem to grant immunity, it's not clear whether this law really extends so far. recently there was a case involving eBay and a defamatory comment posted in feedback that went to the CA supreme court.
but, it seems like blogger=user of an interactive computer service (blog software/internet etc.) and post was by another, so you might conclude that the blogger shouldn't be treated as speaker, though it depends a good amount on the interpretation of the clause, since that is pretty broad. But the trade secret issue may tear down any protection from the law, if it's valid.
it seems more intelligent to go after the actual offender, not the host of the comment, but people generally want to go after the bigger fish, and it is often more difficult to track down the actual commenter.
Re:Two Slugs Battle It Out... (Score:3, Interesting)
So, honestly, two operators in a dirty business go at each other, my personal feeling is I hope they both go down. It's kind of like two porn sites arguing which has the sluttiest bitches...
truckaxle says:Nice analogy but I don't think it fully applies. There is nothing inherently evil about search engine optimization.
Whoa there truckaxle... are you saying there's something inherently evil about slutty bitches? You've never met *good* slutty bitches? Trust me, they're out there...
Anyway, the analogy doesn't work because when two porn sites argue about who has the sluttiest bitches, they both win- it's called a publicity stunt. By contrast, when two search engine optimization companies sue, someone's going to end up paying a lawyer. So at least one of them is going to lose. That's how it's different.
Of course, what Saeed is really getting at is that he doesn't care. These guys can go screw each other, that's OK with him...
Re:Power of the pulpit (Score:3, Interesting)
That's because he is going about it the wrong way. Freenet simply is not capable of delivering what he claims its design goals are (and spare me links to fake Chinese dissident's sites please which cannot be accessed by them using the Web). In oppressive countries, as soon as you are found to be using Freenet (i.e. your PC has Freenet packets coming in/out) your ass is crass for "anti-government" activities. You see, there is no "but I am entitled to sending encrypted data!" defense there. So for that purpose, unless some radical stealth system is put in place involving magic and pixie dust, Freenet is useless for these dissidents.
It can be useful in the West, where you do enjoy these rights to privacy (somewhat) but then, instead of fighting for your rights, you are simply giving in and for every encroachement on your freedoms, you simply try to hide deeper in the grasses of the Internet to escape the "man" and his laws. Wrong strategy, because if you keep it up, sooner or later you will find yourself in jail just for having Freenet client installed as the laws become repressive enough to match these less-then-civilized countries of the so called "axis of evil".
Freenet is a curious technological idea but it is completely wrong-headed and impractical, and in fact extremely dangerous to the not-quite-technical-savvy dissidents who might get a false sense of security by trying to use the damn thing and find themselves in the slammer shortly afterwards.
Re:Freedom of speech comes with responsibility. (Score:3, Interesting)
I have news for you. Lawsuits are empowered by the government, so if the government empowers someone to sue you regarding a comment, then the government is not granting you freedom to speak that comment.
And freedom of speech is not restricted to supporting or rejecting a political candidate. Honest protest of any issue is permissible, and among consenting adults discussion of essentially any topic is permissible. If Burger King were putting cyanide in their french fries, and a blogger posts about this, would you say this is not covered under free speech because it has nothing to do with an election, and that Burger King should then have the right to sue the blogger?
The only case under which Burger King would have the right to sue would be if Burger King could demonstrate that there were no cyanide in its french fries, that the blogger intentionally fabricated the story to damage Burger King's reputation, and that a reasonable person would believe the story produced by the blogger.
Guaranteeing freedom of speech, and thus a free society, requires far more than just not putting people in prison for making political statements.
Re:Freedom of speech comes with responsibility. (Score:5, Interesting)
To use your own logic, there are well-traveled avenues that you could use to prevent your boss from lying about you. They are libel and slander laws, and if it happens with company compliance, you could set yourself up to never work again.
This guy is being served with a murky lawsuit, and the plantiff's counsel offered to drop the whole thing if he removed every bit of referring content to their company. If their counsel really did their homework, they would have documented each and every infraction on his site, included it in the suit, and asked for specific remedies (whether it be money, removal of content, etc.) Upon receiving it, he could get useful legal counsel, and either fight it or comply. Instead, they're trying to intimidate him into silence.
That would be like Microsoft suing slashdot over critical posts and offering to drop the whole thing if every reference to MS was removed from this site.
Maybe before you try the Uncle Ben defense (With great power comes great responsibility) you should RTFConstitution.
Re:Freedom of speech comes with responsibility. (Score:3, Interesting)
You know, the GP only contained three lines. One of them was blank and one of them was a quote.
This is what it said:
So I have to ask: what part of that did you read as saying "people should not be held accountable for acts of libel committed using the Internet"?Why should you be allowed to go around staring negative rumours about your business competitors?
Sounds like standard practice to me. Nothing Jonathan Schwartz doesn't do fairly routinely in his blog, as far as I can see. I'll not start on Microsoft and their sponsorship of groups like the Alexis de Tocqueville institute or I'll e here all night.
How would you like your boss to lie to a future employer that you got fired for drug abuse or for having kiddie porn?
Interesting. One moment we're talking about deating the relative merits of a competitors product, the next: kiddie porn!
I don't really think that allowing people to say "my product is better than that of my competitor" will open the legal floodgates for PHBs everywhere to frame slashdotters worldwide for paedophilia. Perhaps you are still trying to equate "free speech" with "anarchy".
One of the great problems with the Internet currently is that there are so many anonymous cowards, who troll, spam and lie.
And has Aaron Wall trolled, lied or spammed? As far as the courts are concerned, that remains to be determined.
This is a complicated case. At issue are wether Wall posted anonymosue to his own blog or not; whether anonymous posts to bulletin boards should be controlled and if so to what extent; the legality of a whole range of viral marketing and astroturfing; and of course whether it is in anyone's interest to encourage corporations to silence (possibly legitimate) criticism with lawsuits.
Really, it's far from cut and dried.
But if your best analysis of the scenario is "Anarchy! Paedophiles! You will all become Unemployable!" then people may start to wonder whether you have some personal stake matter. And of course, if this case succeeds, such comments may well become actionable under law.
Or perhaps you were counting on the your slashdot alias to shield you from the consequences? I notice you provide very little in the way of personal information.
Re:Freedom of speech comes with responsibility. (Score:4, Interesting)
It's entirely possible (and has already happened) that someone creates a "blog" site intended to serve as sort of an electronic version of a personal diary, accessible anyplace they have Internet access, and mainly intended for a few friends or family members to use if they care to join in. But someone stumbles onto it, discovers what they view as an interesting conversation about something of significance - and starts directing heavy traffic to it. All of a sudden, this person's formerly "unknown" comments have big influence.
Therefore, you have to consider the *potential audience* for your words before you type them - not your current actual audience. When you host a web site on the Internet, the *potential* is always quite large.
If you want to write comments that truly aren't even intended to reach an audience beyond a few selected people, you'd password protect it.
Re:Power of the pulpit (Score:3, Interesting)
And how do you determine its falseness? Court trial? A trial initiated by, say, a 2 billion dollars a year corp against your basement-dwelling (hypotetically) ass. Result: no freedom of speech whatsoever as the court costs alone will utterly ruin you before you even get to the actual trial proper. For practical example, check out the "RIAA vs. teenagers" circus. Result: no freedom of speech against those powerful enough to shut you up.
I am not sure, but I dont think this is exactly what the founding fathers had in mind. Specially that some of them were great believers in anonymous speech, publishing under pseudonyms themselves. See "Publius".
Re:Freedom of speech comes with responsibility. (Score:2, Interesting)
They will let you bitch and moan all you want - it really doesn't change a thing.
Since you mentioned the boss lying about drug use or criminal behaviour, it happens all the time. Someone at the VA wrote into my record that I am a narcotics addict, and made that lie public. It doesn't matter that I have no arrest record for drugs, or that it never happened, the rumor is enough.
Can I sue the VA? Sure, anybody can sue anybody. But could I afford it? Not without a class action, and then I would have to find all the other people who've had the same thing done to them, and that in itself would take a lot of money.
So, the best solution is to lie right back, I guess. It's all just going to turn into a childish flame-war, whether on a message board, or in court.
By the way, the only time I post anonymously (which is seldom) is when I am seriously worried about government retribution. Look what happens to whole countries (like France) who disagree with our present government's policies.
Be well,
Michael
Public Debate (Score:3, Interesting)
There might be a day or two argument over truth, liability and damages. If the comments are not true, then the people making them in public are liable for any damages proven to be caused by those comments. Not very complicated, and certainly nothing new on which to make arguments about "new Internet technologies" which make this different.
Instead, watch this dispute consume months or years, including many days of scarce, publicly funded justice system labor. Watch lawyers pad their pockets with arguments that go nowhere, probably to arrive at either a backwards precedent, or just a settlement that settles nothing but the exchange of more money between the parties (and even more cuts to their lawyers). This is going to cost all of us even more money, immediately in the costs to the justice system to moderate this debate, probably without any benefit to future cases.
This whole notion that "X changed everything" is the biggest lie of our lifetimes. Even when that's partly true, like Columbus' return from the Western Hemisphere with proof that Europeans should conquer the territory, it changes a lot - but not everything. Like realities of physics, economics, and justice. Other laws, like those written by lawyers and approved by judges, can change, too. But those are usually changed to suit the lawyers, regardless of how they affect the rest of us.
Like saying that public speech on the Internet changes the familiar expectations of public, unmoderated speech and liability. Just like when someone posts slanderous, lying posters on a wall along a busy sidewalk. The building owner isn't liable for the damage caused by the posters, unless they're also the posterer. Likewise, people already know that unmoderated websites aren't responsible for the posts made by the public. All the noise to the contrary is just lawyers making excuses to increas their billings.
Editorial control (Score:3, Interesting)
Another case is if you refuse to remove illegal material from your blog, when pointed out to you, you may become responsible.
Of course, if you do remove the material, it may be viewer as editorial control, so it is damned if you do, and damned if you don't.
Re:Freedom of speech comes with responsibility. (Score:3, Interesting)
I must disagree with some of these comments.
1) Burger King does not have to prove anything about their fries. The blogger must offer proof that Burger King added the cyanide. That cyanide was found in the fries is NOT proof that Burger King added cyanide to the fries. Cyanide could quite possibly be a naturally occuring compound in the potatoes or a result of cooking.
2) The degree of fabrication could and IMHO should only be a factor in determining restitution. It has nothing to do with determing the validity of the litigation. Even if the blogger could show he/she truly believed the comments were accurate and took every possible action to verify the statement, that does not change the fundamental fact that the statement is WRONG.
3) Please define "reasonable person". Perhaps I have a Burger King franchise in an area where the population is prone to believing whatever they read or is easily swayed by popular opinion. As a result, I have suffered grievous financial set backs due to your incorrect blogging.
Stranger than Truth... (Score:1, Interesting)
The thing is, many webmaster forums have a thread running, where many former Traffic Power clients explain how they were pressured to sign up, then the work done was poor quality, and eventually Google banned their sites for spamming the search engine results.
Google dropped a very large number of TP client sites out of their search results many months ago. Even "GoogleGuy" (a Google employee who posts at webmasterworld) made comment about it one day, but without specifically naming the company involved.
There is a long string of complaints about TrafficPower already registered with the BBB, and right after that, didn't TP change their name to "1P" or something? Sounds like a company trying to shake off a very bad reputation, to me.
There were no "trade secrets" to divulge. They are all there in the HTML source code of the website, and cross-linking of sites is discoverable with simple searches on the major search engines too.
Law suit is without basis, and should be laughed out of court. Court time would be better spent suing TP on behalf of all their clients that they ripped off over the last few years.
Re:Freedom of speech comes with responsibility. (Score:3, Interesting)
So a blogger can never publish a negative statement about anyone? Because that seems to me to be the result of your viewpoint. Someone acting in good faith for the public interest should not be breaking the law.
3) Please define "reasonable person".
Uh, it has the same meaning as in all the other parts of the law it's used. It's not a new concept he's introducing.