Comments on: Should TheDirty Website Be Liable For Encouraging Users To Gossip? (Forbes Cross-Post)

By: Eric Goldman

Eric Goldman — Mon, 09 Dec 2013 21:47:00 +0000

In reply to lakawak. Sorry, I'm not sure how familiar you are with 47 USC 230, but Congress said that online editing would be treated differently than offline editing. You may not like that dichotomy, but it's the legal baseline. Eric.

By: lakawak

lakawak — Mon, 09 Dec 2013 21:17:00 +0000

There was no “refusal to apply the law” on the part of the judge. Just an ignorance of the law on the part of some worthless blogger. The law applies to third party posts that are posted without any intervention on the part of the site. That is not what thedirty is. By reading all submissions and posting only what he deemed good enough for the site, he became an editor. No different, legally, than the editor of The New York Times. And if the Times published libelous articles, the could be sued too.
Don’t want to get sued? Then don’t moderate

By: Michael Risch

Michael Risch — Mon, 09 Dec 2013 19:30:00 +0000

I know we don’t see eye to eye on this particular point. I’m not convinced that the internet will collapse if providers are held liable when a human selects things they get on the internet and then publishes them. In other words, Barrett was wrong when decided, and its progeny has been wrong since. The fact that this one judge pointed it out but can’t articulate why doesn’t trouble me much. My theory has always been that development and “interactive computer service” have to work together, and human selection of what to print (as opposed to human decisions not to edit or remove) doesn’t fall within the language of the statute.

Of course, the weight of the precedent (among other things) are against that view, and Jones is likely to lose on appeal.