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!
4 comments:
Thank you Phillips, I've learned something new today.
Thanks philips, as someone said earlier, you taught us something new.
There are certainly a lot of details like that to take into consideration. That’s a great point to bring up. I offer the thoughts above as general inspiration but clearly there are questions like the one you bring up where the most important thing will be working in honest good faith.
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