In June, U.S. District Judge Stewart Dalzell rejected a lawsuit by a public relations firm against blogger Tucker Max that centered on comments made by others to Max’s weblog.
PR firm Renamity threw a part which apparently didn’t go very well and in turn became a subject of discussion on Max’s blog. Renamity owner Anthony DiMeo III then sued Max arguing that Max could be held personally liable for allegedly defamatory anonymous comments about the party and Renamity.
Dalzell rejected that, arguing in a 22-page opinion that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act explicitly exempts website operators from being held liable over comments, even when the website owner exercises some editorial control over what comments appear.
As the judge wrote,
Congress believed that § 230(c)(1) would promote these ideals. With the number of Internet users reaching [**12] the hundreds of millions, the quantum of information conveyed through interactive computer agencies is staggering:
The specter of tort liability in an area of such prolific speech would have an obvious chilling effect. It would be impossible for service providers to screen each of their millions of postings for possible problems. Faced with potential liability for each message republished by their services, interactive computer service providers might choose to severely restrict the number and type of messages posted.
Zeran, 129 F.3d at 331. In other words, absent federal statutory protection, interactive computer services would essentially have two choices: (1) employ an army of highly trained monitors to patrol (in real time) each chatroom, message board, and blog to screen any message that one could label defamatory, or (2) simply avoid such a massive headache and shut down these fora. Either option would profoundly chill Internet speech.
I receive significant amounts of e-mail from people angry at one thing or another that someone has posted on one of my websites — many of them accompanied by legal threats to do this or that unless I remove some offending comment or another.
So far, all of the legal decisions here have favored website operators, though the Supreme Court has yet to rule explicity in this matter. The closest it has come was to reject an appeal against a similar finding in the 9th Circuit a few years ago.
The full text of the judge’s decision can be read here.