Dec
05
2009
Of course, she was also convicted of the more serious crimes related to murder. But in Italy, defamation is a criminal offense. And Amanda Knox claimed Patrick Diya Lumumba, a pub owner, was responsible. So the police added a defamation charge, and the Jury convicted her of that also.
Obviously the problem of online defamation may not be unique to us in the US, but it must be a rare occurrence in Italy and a number of other countries in which defamation can land you in jail. Big problems in the US are not so big problems elsewhere because the laws are ahead of the curve. A greater appreciation by the legislatures and courts of the threat to US businesses and citizens would be nice. A threat, obviously, that does not exist in the same way in Italy.
Oct
26
2009
The 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals (United States v. Fullmer) has rejected free speech defenses and upheld the conviction of six animal rights activists for launching a website and inviting its supporters to engage in a coordinated campaign by a large number of individuals to inundate websites, e-mail servers, and other electronic systems of Huntingdon Life Sciences. They were also convicted of Federal Internet Stalking and prison sentences range from one to six years.
Here’s the wording of the AETA law central to the Court’s ruling and the basis of unsuccessful constitutional free speech challenges:
(a) Offense- Whoever travels in interstate or foreign commerce, or uses or causes to be used the mail or any facility of interstate or foreign commerce–
(1) for the purpose of damaging or interfering with the operations of an animal enterprise; and
(2) in connection with such purpose–
(A) intentionally damages or causes the loss of any real or personal property (including animals or records) used by an animal enterprise, or any real or personal property of a person or entity having a connection to, relationship with, or transactions with an animal enterprise;
(B) intentionally places a person in reasonable fear of the death of, or serious bodily injury to that person, a member of the immediate family (as defined in section 115) of that person, or a spouse or intimate partner of that person by a course of conduct involving threats, acts of vandalism, property damage, criminal trespass, harassment, or intimidation; or
(C) conspires or attempts to do so;
shall be punished as provided for in subsection (b).
If we can protect our pet stores (which are included in this statute) why won’t Congress protect the public and small businesses with similar legislation? Mobosphere attacks will become a thing of the past when that happens.
Oct
08
2009
Change is coming! Our call to action is being heard!
Below is the excerpt of the testimony of John Palfrey of Harvard Law School before a Congressional Committee on September 30, 2009. It mirrors the arguments and call to action we made in Google Bomb in material respects. His excerpted comments follow:
… it is time to re-examine how far CDA 230’s immunity extends. A lot has happened over the past decade. Those who drafted this provision would have had a hard time anticipating the changes that have ensued – and quite how broadly this immunity would extend over time. To be clear, courts that have extended the immunity fairly broadly (the general posture of most courts that have taken up cases at the edges of this area of doctrine) have been right – on the law as it stands – to do so. The law, as written, shields from liability MySpace, for instance, in the Julie Doe case in Texas, or Craigslist in the cases associated with Section 8 housing, and so forth.
In my view, these types of cases are not rightly decided, though, from the perspective of what the law ought to protect or not to protect. In the context of online safety, the law needs to provide an incentive for technology companies to do the right thing. The law should avoid establishing a framework that allows technology companies to ignore the problems that their young users are encountering online. Take the hypothetical case of a young person who is physically harmed after meeting someone in an online environment. The young person (or his parents, more likely) seeks to bring suit against the service provider involved. In my view, the service provider should not have special protection from such a tort claim. Such a claim should be decided on the merits. Was the service provider negligent? Or not? The fact that the service provider is offering an Internet-based service, rather than a physically-based service, should result in an automatic shield to liability.
Most major social networks in the United States would not likely be liable for the harm in such terrible instances. The most prominent social networks, like Facebook and MySpace, are taking more and more affirmative steps to make their online environments safer for kids – such that a negligence claim ought not reach them. But the claim should not be barred at the courthouse door, in my view. The opposite incentive should be at work: to encourage them to continue their innovation to protect kids.
The Congress ought to consider how to ensure that online intermediaries have an obligation not to ignore harm that is occurring to their users online. Online gossip sites like AutoAdmit and Juicy Campus have become symbols of bad behavior because the site operators often refuse to cooperate with victims to help those who were harmed by defamation on their site. Many students, among others, are bullied – presumably by peers who knew them – through defamatory online expression on these online forums. For quite some time, the students harmed had no recourse: the site operators refused to take down the harmful material, even when notified of the harm, and the students could not identify the people who had posted the harmful speech anonymously because the site operators claimed not to keep any log files. The site operators hid behind federal law: Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which provided them a safe harbor.
The growth of online bullying and other online safety risks means it is time to rethink this particular safe harbor in terms of its breadth. The question to ask is whether such site operators might have some form of affirmative obligation in cases where harm to minors is clear. One could imagine at least two ways to amend the safe harbor. The lighter-touch approach would be to require intermediaries to retain log files for a certain period of time and to participate in law enforcement efforts to bring those who defame others to justice. Alternately, one could require online intermediaries to respond to notice from those who have been defamed by taking down the defamatory content if the intermediary wishes to be protected by the safe harbor (which is what we do in the context of copyright, through Section 512 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act). A third approach could be to exempt intermediaries from the safe harbor of CDA 230 altogether in cases where there has been harm to young people as a result of harmful speech, a carve-out that parallels the carve-out in CDA 230 for copyright complaints.
I trust, for those of you who have read Google Bomb, this all sounds quite familiar. Even down to the detailed suggestions for remedying the overly broad nature of the law.
Yes, change is coming. With your help.
