Yippee! Websites NOT libel for third-party postings!

In a good decision, the California Supreme Court has said that website publishers (such as yours truly) are NOT liable for libelous postings by others on the website.

Of course this means that the original poster IS still liable if they defame or libel someone or a company or organization.

This is a huge victory for Freedom of Speech, btw, cause now webmasters don't need to worry about having to censor this type of speech. The responsibility lies completely with the poster.

I'll be breathing easier for a long time to come...



arty:



SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) - Websites that publish inflammatory information written by other parties cannot be sued for libel, the California Supreme Court ruled Monday.

The ruling in favour 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 websites.

Some of the Internet's biggest names, including Amazon.com, America Online Inc., EBay Inc., Google Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc., took the defendant's side out of concern a ruling against her would expose them to liability.

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 prospect of blanket immunity for those who intentionally redistribute defamatory statements on the Internet has disturbing implications," Associate Justice Carol Corrigan wrote in the majority opinion. "Nevertheless ... statutory immunity serves to protect online freedom of expression and to encourage self-regulation, as Congress intended." Unless the U.S. Congress revises the existing law, people who claim they were defamed in an Internet posting can only seek damages from the original source of the statement, the court ruled.



Source:http://www.breitbart.com/news/na/cp_z112019A.xml.html

 

I copied this from the Computer forum so you guys could see it (cause you probably never visit such a nerdy forum...

 

Indeed!

Of course this lets corporations off the hook too! So a company like Google which now owns YouTube, isn't required to actually VIEW every video that gets posted up for offensive or libelous content. Such a thing would be impossible to do anyway.

BTW, I just had a lawyer threaten me with a lawsuit the other day for some comment posted up on Hippy.com by an anonymous person. It mentioned a person by name (who happened to be a cop according to the lawyer), and this lawyer was threatening me unless I took it down, which I therefore had to do.

Ironically the content wasn't even that bad, or insulting, just the fact that the cop's name was mentioned - and the comment never even mentioned that he was a cop & could've referred to anyone with the same name...

So this is the kind of thing where I can now tell lawyers to take a flying leap!

 

In fact, I just had to write that lawyer after this, and pretty much told him to take a flying leap!

 

It's easy to find your name via Google. I think that was all they did, and because he was a cop they didn't want his name out there at all. It was a b.s. request cause as I said the comment never even mentioned he was a cop, it did however say something like he did some stupid shit on the highway.

It was on an article about Alabama I think. So you know those southern cops are rather fucked up - comeon, sue me for that!

BTW, it wasn't HERE, but on hippy.com where the comment was posted.