Rise in lawsuits against bloggers
Since 2004, 159 court actions have targeted citizen journalists for libel and other charges.
By Huma Yusuf | Contributor for The Christian Science Monitor/ July 16, 2008 edition
Courtesy of Dave Angel
In court: Kathleen Seidel, subpoenaed this spring, was able to deflect legal threats against her blog.
Contributor Huma Yusuf discusses bloggers being sued and hit with 'cease and desist' orders.
Contributor Huma Yusuf
When Christopher Grotke answered a late-night knock on the door, he did not expect to find the deputy sheriff on his doorstep serving notice that he was being sued. Nor was he prepared for the charge: libel.
Someone had posted a comment on his citizen-journalism website, iBrattleboro.com, stating that a woman in Brattleboro, Vt., was having an extramarital affair. The accused woman then sued Mr. Grotke and his website cofounder for failing to edit or delete the comment.
The blogging community increasingly is subject to lawsuits and threats of legal action running the gamut from subpoenas to cease-and-desist notices. Since blogging became popular in about 2004, there have been 159 civil and criminal court actions involving bloggers, according to the nonprofit Media Law Resource Center (MLRC) in New York. Seven cases have resulted in verdicts against bloggers, with cumulative penalties totaling $18.5 million. Many more legal actions never result in trial.
The result? A stifling of free speech in a medium providing more comprehensive and diverse opportunities for commentary than ever before, digital-rights activists, media lawyers, and bloggers say.
“There is a chilling effect of a cease-and-desist letter or a legal threat that claims an aspect of a blogger’s work could lead to liability, even when those claims are not well grounded,” says Kurt Opsahl, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a nonprofit in San Francisco that defends digital rights.
Bloggers faced with legal threats often deem it easier to remove potentially offensive content rather than undertake the difficulty and expense of defending themselves, he adds.
Abroad, more than 60 bloggers arrested
Bloggers face much bigger threats overseas, particularly if they criticize governments or point to human rights abuses.
Since 2003, 64 bloggers have been arrested around the world – with Egypt, China, and Iran initiating more than half of those arrests, according to the World Information Access Report, published last month by the University of Washington. By contrast, the United States has arrested two in that period.
Still, online commentators face risks in the United States.
“In the developed world, bloggers can be punished through lawsuits,” writes Philip Howard, a communications professor at the University of Washington, in an e-mail.
The number of lawsuits is growing, says Robert Cox, president of the Media Bloggers Association (MBA), a US-based group devoted to protecting citizen journalists. “As blogging expands and more people are aware of it, the lawyers are not far behind.”
No one is suggesting that bloggers should have free rein to publish whatever they want.
“If you’re slandering, you can be sued whether you have a blog or not,” says Mr. Cox, a blogger himself. “You’re not immune to defamation charges … just because you’re a citizen speaking your mind.”
Who should educate the bloggers?
There is no consensus, however, on how best to make bloggers aware of their legal responsibilities.
Many lawyers expect bloggers to figure it out themselves.
“If you’re going to be responsible enough to manage a site where people post such things, you should be able to detect when things are defamatory and take them down,” says Margot Stone, the lawyer for the woman who sued Grotke. “The problem is that technology is outpacing the ethical responsibilities. People haven’t thought through the ethics of all this.”
Online communities as well as media activists and lawyers are pushing to ensure that bloggers are aware of their legal rights and responsibilities.
The EFF and the Citizen Media Law Project (CMLP) – an affiliate of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School – offer detailed legal guides for bloggers. Both organizations also help bloggers find legal counsel.
In addition, the CMLP maintains a database of all legal action directed against bloggers. “That way bloggers know they’re not alone,” explains David Ardia, director of the CMLP.
Other citizen-media groups say more proactive support is needed.
Since 2006, the MBA has been working with Media Pro Insurance to create the MBA Media Liability Insurance program.
“We’re coming up with a product that covers defamation, copyright, privacy violations – the same protections as newspapers – for bloggers,” says the group’s Mr. Cox. MBA members will receive a hefty discount on the insurance package, due to be launched at the end of this month. The cheapest coverage for a solo blogger will be $540 a year.
But some bloggers resist the idea.
“I don’t have the money for that kind of thing,” says Kathleen Seidel, a New Hampshire-based blogger who was subpoenaed this spring in connection with another lawsuit against vaccine manufacturers that she had written about on her blog.
Having written several posts about litigation and completed two legal courses at the local community college, Ms. Seidel was able to deflect legal threats against her blog and successfully composed a motion to quash the subpoena.
Grotke, too, was able to convince a Vermont court to dismiss libel charges.
Many bloggers, however, aren’t so fortunate, which is why the online community is searching for ways to protect them. “The effect of intimidation is a real one,” Seidel says.
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Comments
3. Chuck Kidd | 07.17.08
Yup, Lawyers are always looking for new territory to market lawsuits and BIG BROTHER is not far behind to shut up those who wish to express themselves FREELY. The Net is the new FREEDOM of SPEECH arena to oppose BIG BROTHER and his companion BIG CORPORATIONS.
4. MJ | 07.18.08
You people just don’t understand the law. You can’t say ANYTHING you like. When things that are posted come across as FACT rather than OPINION and those statements legitimately cause people actual damages it isn’t right. If someone loses a job or suffers maritial problems as a result of a malicious and false posting, that isn’t right. I firmly stand by freedom of speech, but you have to balance peoples rights. You certainly have the right to express your opinions, but if the things you say are FALSE and they hurt me finanically…you bet your a$$ I am coming after you. AND most people reading this would do the same thing. I am sure if something posted really affected your life or hit you in the pocketbook you would be on the phone with a lawyer PDQ. Seeing as there have only been 159 actions since 2004 and there are 50 million plus blogs out there this doesn’t appear to be all that big of a problem….just something more for bloggers to bitch about regarding lawyers, big brother, and big bad corporations….ENJOY!
5. Don Parks | 07.19.08
What is needed is for Washington to set up a “Pre-posting” office that
will read, verify, modify, and approve EVERYTHING that is posted on
the Internet BEFORE its posted to get rid of this potential problem.
6. uthor | 07.21.08
MJ, the problem, as I see it, isn’t with a blogger posting libel, it’s with a commentor on a site doing so, and the person running the site getting in trouble for it.
I post some things on LiveJournal that maybe two other people read. I can moderate the comments (not that I would want to). A popular blog would get dozens of posts every minute. I’d imagine a place like Fark gets hundreds of posts a second. I don’t see how a site like that can moderate everything being posted, I don’t think a site like that should moderate for fear of a lawsuit, and I don’t think that the person running such a site should be held responsible for the content others put on there (moderation to keep the site clean, free from spam, and running smoothly is a different concern).
7. Carl McMurray | 07.24.08
I think the Washington Pre-Posting idea is a good one and I’m sure the Barak would be happy to jack up taxes another level for his ObamaCare and cover this under Political Health Care.
8. Christopher Grotke | 08.18.08
This story is inaccurate, and shows anti-web bias by a confused print reporter who makes the same arguments as the person who LOST their suit against us.
iBrattleboro WON the case and it was dismissed due to CDA 230 issues. iBrattleboro knew the laws (and had a take-down policy that the lawyer didn’t use). The person who didn’t understand the law was the one bringing the suit. iBrattleboro was “educated”, and a question like “who will educate the bloggers?” gets the lame wrong - just like the lawyer bringing suit.
The lawyer suing iBrattleboro was unaware of the Communications Decency Act, and thought that a service provider should be responsible for what people do with the service.
The court found, correctly, that the author of the comment is the one responsible for the comment - not the platform by which it was published. The judge said that iBrattleboro did even more than they is required by law, and found nothing at fault with the site.
If iBrattleboro was responsible, so would the maker of the computer, the maker of the browser software, the owner of the phone lines, the ISP, etc.
Who will educate the reporters writing about it? And the lawyers who don’t know the law?
This article makes it looks like people can say or do anything on the Internet and there is no recourse. That’s wrong. Our judge clearly said that the liability lies with the person who wrote it, and this backs up more than a decade of similar law.
This article should be saying that an uneducated lawyer didn’t know current laws and launched an unsuccessful lawsuit against a business that was following, even exceeding, legal requirements for such a service.
Incidentally, the case continues. The person who made the signed comment is still facing libel charges, but is fighting it with facts and there has yet to be a determination. It hasn’t yet been determined that anyone was libeled at all.
9. MBA Colleges | 10.25.08
Blogs are only online opinions. Most opinions are emoted because most people
emote rather than rationalise (e.g. global warming/anthropogenic climate change). How about we sue the UN or the Nobel Committee? No matter how badly we may disagree with a blog; it is simply opinionated speech in written from.
Ignorance shall reveal itself. There is no shame in ignorance. The shame lies in willful ignorance and stubborn refusal to adapt to facts. Can we take down political blogs? No. Politics is based upon lies and mistruths and the slanting of facts/quotes out of context, etc. If we could ban political blogs most entertainment would fade from the blogosphere and broadcast media would again be free to slant news to fit its own goals. Anarchy is best in the world of cyberspace. People should be free to regulate the regulators.
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1. Blane Burns | 07.16.08
Blogs are only online opinions. Most opinions are emoted because most people
emote rather than rationalise (e.g. global warming/anthropogenic climate change). How about we sue the UN or the Nobel Committee? No matter how badly we may disagree with a blog; it is simply opinionated speech in written from.
Ignorance shall reveal itself. There is no shame in ignorance. The shame lies in willful ignorance and stubborn refusal to adapt to facts. Can we take down political blogs? No. Politics is based upon lies and mistruths and the slanting of facts/quotes out of context, etc. If we could ban political blogs most entertainment would fade from the blogosphere and broadcast media would again be free to slant news to fit its own goals. Anarchy is best in the world of cyberspace. People should be free to regulate the regulators.