Courts Rejecting Conspiracy Claims
In Google Bomb I discuss the situation in which competitors go onto a website and act like a customer of a busines. They post derogatory comments about the competing business or its products or services.
In a recent Federal case, the court rejected claims made by the targeted victim against the website based upon conspiracy claims. This decision was consistent with a number of other cases alleging “aiding and abetting” and “conspiracy” in order to try to get around the immunity protections of Section 230. A law, by the way, that is discussed extensively in the book.
The case is Cornelius v. DeLuca, 2009 WL 2568044 (E.D. Mo. Aug. 18, 2009)
DeLuca runs bodybuilding.com, a fitness website and online retailer, and the posts were on its site. I suspect absent a showing of direct involvement in the posts, sites are going to be able to avoid liability for the posts of third parties. That is the message in Google Bomb, and it is incrediblly difficult to discover the involvement of a site in the drafting of defamatory comments absent legal discovery. Which will never occur as long as Courts are dismissing these cases at the onset. Thus the problem.
There is a chapter devoted to product review and comparison sites in Google Bomb.
