Reaction: Liability for Defamation of Character

My classmate, David Shabazz, has a very interesting topic on his blog, Write for Freedom, right now. He examines liability for defamatory postings, citing major examples of where the terms distributor and publisher had to be clearing marked. To begin with, I love communication law, so I loved this subject! Way to go, David!

David examines two cases where the courts made two separate rulings. In Cubby Inc. v. CompuServe in 1991, courts said CompuServe was not liable for comments made on their Journalism Forum because they were a distributor of information, not the publisher. But in Stratton Oakmont v. Prodigy Services in 1995, Prodigy was held accountable for comments made on it’s discussion boards because Prodigy had the means to control the content and has automatic screening for such comments, thus making them a publisher, someone who knows what’s going to be read and should have an idea over whether it’s defamatory.

Congress has since taken steps (including creating the Telecommunications Act of 1996) to protect distributors and publishers in lawsuits regarding defamatory postings.

Defamation of character has always been a hot issue, but the popularity of the Internet has made it harder to control that. If you’re one of the four people who forward a defamatory e-mail to another four people, are you liable? Are we publishers or distributors? How would be know the information is not true?

If we link a post from our blog to another blog that contains defamatory comments, are we liable? What if we know it’s not true, but link it anyway under false pretenses?