Res Ipsa Loquitur

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November 21, 2006

Cali Supremes Get One Right

Good news for bloggers:

Web sites that publish inflammatory information written by other parties cannot be sued for libel, the California Supreme Court ruled Monday.

The ruling in favor of free online expression was a victory for a San Diego woman who was sued by two doctors for posting an allegedly libelous e-mail on two Web sites.

.....

In reversing an appellate court's decision, the state Supreme Court ruled that the Communications Decency Act of 1996 provides broad immunity from defamation lawsuits for people who publish information on the Internet that was gathered from another source.

The case, Barrett, et al. v. Rosenthal, which the news services don't bother to link to, can be read here. Go read it for yourself, it's actually fairly well written.

The interesting dicta for us is found on p. 29:

We note that in cases where an individual’s role as operator of a Web site raised a question as to whether he was a “service provider� or a “user,� the courts found it unnecessary to resolve the issue because the statute confers immunity on both.

Good to know we don't have to try & determine if someone's comment is libelous, especially for those of us who moderate comments. Which I do on occasion, though I rarely have to except for comment spam. But there's been a few times when I didn't publish someone's comment because of its content. A recent 9/11 conspiracy comment springs to mind, a long-winded rehashing of some of the most ridiculous drivel I've ever read....which of course you, dear reader, didn't have to endure because I keel it before it grow mon. It fell into that category of 'get your own blog cuz you're not wasting my bandwidth with that crap' automatic deletion & blocking of the author. And he can't sue me cuz Congress said so, so HA! That only happens rarely, but it does happen.

Not to any of you, of course. Y'all have better manners.

Posted by Rita at November 21, 2006 05:50 AM

Comments

Posted by: BloodSpite at November 22, 2006 09:50 AM

Posted by: Rita at November 22, 2006 09:55 AM