Sunday, December 10, 2006
California Supreme Court rules to protect free speech
Calif. court ruling seeks to protect bloggers, Web publishers
In a victory for bloggers, newsgroup participants and other Web publishers, the California Supreme Court ruled Monday that individual Internet users cannot be held liable for republishing defamatory statements written by others.
The unanimous ruling appears to be the first to make clear that a 1996 law called the Communications Decency Act protects not only providers, but also users of online services who redistribute content. Earlier court rulings had established that Section 230 of that statute shields companies such as AOL and eBay from such liability, provided that they make good faith efforts to restrict access to material that could be considered “obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable.”
By passing that law, Congress “has comprehensively immunized republication by individual Internet users,” intending “to protect online freedom of expression and to encourage self-regulation,” the justices concluded in their majority opinion (click for PDF) penned by Associate Justice Carol Corrigan.
The justices acknowledged that “recognizing broad immunity for defamatory republications on the Internet has some troubling consequences.” But unless Congress revises the law, anyone who claims to be defamed by an Internet posting may seek damages only from the “original source of the statement,” they wrote.
That protection should not extend, however, to users who conspire with the originators of libelous content, Associate Justice Carlos Moreno wrote in a concurring opinion.
“One engaged in a tortious conspiracy with the original information content provider is hardly one of the neutral ‘intermediaries’ that Congress intended to absolve of liability,” he wrote, adding that he did not believe that sort of activity took place in the case at hand.
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I haven’t heard of any webhosts changing their terms.
I recently checked out servers in the states again and found the same old terms: your entire server gets shut down if you don’t comply with removing “defamatory” statements upon notice and usually they give you only a day or two and it’s NOT anything that’s negotiable—unless you’re paying them at least several thousand dollars a month.
The web hosting industry is about as pro corporate and anti free speech as it gets. And as the dollar keeps falling, my server rental keeps going up.
Legal • Court - rulings - procedures • Free speech & corporate censorship • (0) Comments • Permalink
