Defamation and Social Media

Hello!

Defamation is becoming a huge issue on social media sites such as Blogs, Twitter, and Facebook. Recently there have been some notable cases involving defamation litigation. Specifically, Courtney Love is being sued for making an alleged defamatory "tweet" about a famous designer.

What is a defamatory statement? The law defines defamation as spoken or written words that are false and or misleading that gives the defamed a negative image and or hurts their reputation. The defamatory statement must be made to someone other than the person subject to the defamation. The law also differentiates between written and oral defamatory statements. Written statements are called libel and oral statements are slander.

Who is liable for libel statements made on blogs or social networks? Are owners of these sites liable for defamatory statements made by users of their sites? Or is the person who made the defaming statement solely liable?

Under the Communications Decency Act, an owner of a social networking site is not liable for the defamatory statements made about another on their site unless the site owner actively engages in the gathering of information from the user that leads to the defamatory statement. An example of this type of behavior is a blog owner soliciting comments from users on whether they dislike Celebrity X and why? The comments leads to defamatory statements about the celebrity and the blog owner supports, encourages, and endorses the libel statements.

Of course, anyone who makes a defamatory statement about another on any social network is personally liable for his or her statements.

How can owners of social networking sites and users of these sites protect themselves from defamation liability?

Owners should discourage and immediately remove potentially defamatory or libel statements from their sites. Owners should never enter into any dialogue with a user concerning a person's reputation. In addition, including a disclaimer or statement regarding your removal of any defamatory statements on your site, may potentially discourage users from engaging in such behavior. Plus it puts the public on notice that you do not endorse defamatory conduct.

Users of social networking sites should avoid personal opinions or negative comments that are not 100% factual and or statements that may harm a person's image or reputation. The best advice I have ever received is "if you don't have anything positive to say, then don't say nothing at all." One negative comment could cost you tons of money and heartache.

I welcome your thoughts!

Happy New Year!

Hello!

Happy New Year! I hope your holiday break was wonderful! I am so excited to start the New Year. This is a very exciting time for Intellectual Property Law! There are some fantastic conferences on legal issues in new media that I am attending this year. Also I am very curious about the effect the newly created Intellectual Property Coordinator/Czar will have on IP issues in this new digital age.

In March I am attending another Practising Law Institute Conference which will focus on Intellectual Property law issues in Web 2.0. Specifically, the conference will cover:

Legal issues using mobile devices
Liability issues in social networks and blogs
Use of key words and meta-tags. I discussed these issues here.
The future of advertising and product placement.

I am particularly interested in the future of advertising and product placement as it relates to advertisers using social media and various new media platforms. I am so looking forward to this conference and can't wait to report back to you (my readers) about the cutting edge legal issues affecting your blogs, social networks, and other new media platforms.

Thank you for continually reading and supporting IP LAW 101. If there are any other topics you would like me to discuss, or if you have any questions, please let me know.

Best!