Legal Action

The first is from a Pembroke Pines resort whose guest wrote a review describing the hotel as “filthy and bug-infested.” The second, from a South Florida cosmetic surgery clinic, is over a Web review warning people to “avoid [it] like the plague.” Both companies are suing for libel.

The idea of suing someone for expressing a negative opinion about a company online isn’t new, though it does appear to be growing rapidly in popularity. Just last month, an eBay seller from the U.K. sued a guy who left negative feedback on his account after buying a cell phone from him. The guy said the phone he received was not the model listed and wasn’t in the “good condition” that had been claimed. His “malicious” feedback? “Item was scratched, chipped and not the model advertised.”

A Minor Oversight

I think the lawsuit-happy segment of our society — encouraged no doubt by the instant publication nature of the Internet — has forgotten one crucial thing: Expressing an opinion, at least in the nations under question here, is not a crime. It’s a protected right. The condensed legal definition of libel (note bolded section):

to publish in print (including pictures), writing or broadcast through radio, television or film, an untruth about another which will do harm to that person or his/her reputation, by tending to bring the target into ridicule, hatred, scorn or contempt of others. … Publication need only be to one person, but it must be a statement which claims to be fact, and is not clearly identified as an opinion.

Libel 101

It seems safe to say that most user review forums, as well as eBay’s feedback sections, are clearly identified as opinion by their very titles alone. I don’t think any of these users had claimed their reviews were anything but opinion. That, you corporate clowns, is not libel. Moreover, can these companies prove the statements made in the reviews are false? Even if they weren’t designated as opinion, they’d be protected by the facet of libel’s definition that states:

That which is name-calling, hyperbole, or, however characterized, cannot be proven true or false, cannot be the subject of a libel or slander claim.

The Final Word

We can only hope these frivolous suits will be knocked down before they begin. If these companies get their way even once, the very protection that gives us the right to speak our minds, whether online or in person, will be in jeopardy.

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The case was centered around the charge by Wayne Crookes that Ted Nelson who owns p2pnet had defamed him by linking to articles that Crookes apparently didn’t like. The judge ruled that in the case of it just being a link to the article this doesn’t amount to republication and therefor there is no libel. However the judge was quick to qualify that this doesn’t mean that linking couldn’t be grounds for being sued

 

However, warned Kelleher, “I do not wish to be misunderstood. It is not my decision that hyperlinking can never make a person liable for the contents of the remote site.

“For example, if Mr. Newton had written ‘the truth about Wayne Crookes is found here’ and ‘here’ is hyperlinked to the specific defamatory words, this might lead to a different conclusion.”

 

So without the republication Crookes didn’t have a leg to stand and ended up losing the lawsuit and in the process set a precedent in Canadian law in favour of freedom of online speech. You can read the full court decision here

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A federal judge has ruled against the students’ wishes and ordered them to stay silent, upholding a temporary restraining order requested by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority. The MBTA sprung into action days before the students were set to reveal their findings at last weekend’s DEFCON 16 hackers’ conference.

The students say they found a simple way anyone could modify the cards used to pay for rides on Boston’s “T” subway system. In an nutshell, they discovered that the cards didn’t connect to a central database and didn’t have secure digital signatures — so adding hundreds of dollars in value to them wouldn’t take much.

The MBTA says it needs time to look over the data and decide how to handle it. Of course, in filing the complaint, the paperwork detailing the flaw made its way onto the Internet — so it’s all really a moot point.

That’s what makes it so surprising, then, that the judge refused to lift the restraining order and let the students discuss their discovery. Anyone can already find the information — and, on top of that, the students say they offered to give the MBTA their findings in advance. (The MBTA, for its part, says it received only a summarized version and wanted to see the whole presentation.)

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is fighting for the students’ side, but so far, it’s been a losing battle. Up next, the students will have to give the judge more details about the flaw they found. He’ll then rule on Tuesday whether to extend the restraining order or let them finally speak.

Is it the students’ responsibility to hold the MBTA’s hand and walk it through what they found? Seems to me that the kids have already gone above and beyond any obligation they might have had. Technically, if the MBTA can prove that the information would cause it harm if released, it’ll have the law on its side — though it does make you wonder where the line lies and why when it comes to this sort of case.

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The Memphis Police Department has filed a subpoena asking AOL to provide them the identity of the person or people behind the MPD Enforcer 2.0 blog, which is apparently hosted on AOL’s servers. The blog takes a critical look at the police department, in particular its leaders.

“It has been a common practice for the administration to cover up political incidents in an attempt to climb the ladder of power within the department,” the latest post, written Wednesday, reads.

The blog has evidently become quite popular with police and the general public alike. Though the police department has not given a specific reason for why it wants the bloggers’ identities — currently known only as the alias “Dirk Diggler” — its request has gotten both the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Privacy Information Center fired up.

“We are quite interested in preserving the anonymity of the bloggers,” ACLU Tennessee Executive Director Hedy Weinberg told the Memphis Commercial Appeal. “Anonymous speech has long been protected speech under the First Amendment.”

The bloggers say they’ve hired the Public Citizen Litigation Group to represent them in the case. AOL, however, has lost a similar battle to protect users’ identities before: In 2001, a Japanese electronics company demanded the name of a user it said had posted “false, defamatory and otherwise unlawful messages” on a message board. Despite AOL’s efforts to keep the information private, a Virginia Supreme Court ruled in the other company’s favor.

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