Online libel: How To Avoid
I just read a timely article on The Register about anonymity for online libellers.
A fund manager, Terry Smith, chief executive of city firm Collins Stewart Tullett, won undisclosed damages from Jeremy Benjamin, another fund manager after Benjamin had posted what he now accepts as false allegations on the Motley Fool forum, www.fool.co.uk under a pseudonym. The Motley Fool who were forced to give over Benjamin’s details by a court order, had already taken down Benjamin’s post once Mr. Smith contacted them. However, the damage had already been done.
Last night at Blogs in Action, David Carr, who is a director with Big Blog Company, but also happens to be a lawyer, gave an impromptu presentation on the minefield that is online libel.
David pointed out that website owners and bloggers need to be concerned about online libel. David reiterated that the internet is not outside the law and that you can’t post whatever you like.
Just because you didn’t write any potentially libellous articles does not exonerate you, and David ran through an interesting case concerning Demon Internet to prove his point.
Site owners do not have to police their comments, but if someone posts something that is potentially libellous, you are obliged to take it down if someone tells you that they think it is libellous.
This however, puts bloggers in a difficult situation, because if the statement proves to be true rather than libellous, then if by removing it your actions could be deemed libellous.
To counter this, David recommended that site owners put a disclaimer on their site saying that any comments are permitted only because the site owner is letting you post, and that any comments will be removed for any reason at the absolute discretion of the site owner.
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Pingback by Do You Moderate Comments? | Connected Internet on 8 March 2007:
[...] form just so that I can remove comments if I want to, without the author being able to say that my actions were libellous. I think the only comments I have removed is where they have contained strong [...]
Pingback by Anti-plagiarism Site Turnitin Sued For Copyright Violation | Connected Internet on 21 June 2007:
[...] I also wonder how copyright law applies to sites like Techmeme. I think submission sites like Digg, Yahoo and Del.icio.us are protected by the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) and safe harbor i.e. if copyrighted material is added then it is the submitter who is breaking the law, and all the site in question has to do to stay within the law is remove any illegal content it is made aware of in a timely manner (a similar approach should be taken for libelous content). [...]
Comment by NLP Master on 14 August 2007:
Prosecuting online libel will be tough due to jurisdiction. Imagine that a Canadian opens a blog hosted in Russia and a Scandinavian posts a comment slamming an Ethiopian who lives in Mexico.
Which court will try the case???
Pingback by Does Your Blog Have A Privacy Policy? | Connected Internet on 12 February 2008:
[...] to from the homepage. I have a comment policy to reduce the chances of the site being accused of online libel, but I suddenly realised that I didn’t have a privacy policy for the site, which could leave [...]
Comment by Online Libel & Internet Defamation Removal Research on 6 May 2008:
Based on my research the last few days, “winners†in court are far and few between. But it is obviously a significant problem.
These guys make a living out of getting online libel removed but seem to be more focused on out-of-court solutions: http://www.rexxfield.com
If anyone know of good resources for a research paper on international online libel. precedent etc. Let me know please.
Thank you much
YA