In fact for a period of time the thread had been locked and then disappeared, apparently as a direct consequence of a threatening e-mail received from someone claiming to represent this unnamed-here person.
In this thread I have no desire to revisit this particular person’s status, or what should be allowed in that thread, but do wish for us to visit the abstract argument of what constitutes a “public figure”, and what would constitute libel of a “private person” who has made public actions/statements. And of course what liabilities a MB has over a members comments.
I am not Pitting the Board’s actions but if mods feel this belongs other than in GD please feel free to move it.
This doesn’t address the SDMB’s potential liability(ies), but it should be noted that recently the California Supreme Court decided that an individual Internet poster is not at risk for reposting what someone else has written, even if those writings are libelous.
So individual posters who find comments deleted here can apparently slime to their hearts’ content on their own blogs, without fear of reprisal. At least in California.
Both the SDMB and several posters received e-mails from a person who presented herself as a lawyer.
The statements in question were actually going to be issued Warnings even if no lawyer had appeared, as the comments in those posts to which the “lawyer” objected were out of line for Great Debates.
The statements on the linked site are of no concern to us, but statements posted on this board are. (Note that only three posts–two original and one quoting one of the others–were removed, even though the “lawyer” complained of/to multiple posts. It was the poster’s text, not the link, that caused a problem.)
It was unfortunate that no Great Debates moderator happened to be reading the board when the brouhaha started or the issue might not have gotten quite so far. (I, for example, was knocked off the internet for almost six hours during and following a thunderstorm.) It was also unfortunate that the matter was raised separately in two distinct threads, leading to some confusion as the threads were merged and moved–during which time they briefly disappered.
However, we are not censoring other people’s web sites (aside from a couple of exceptions to avoid board wars and similar matters). We are, however, not tolerating personal attacks on other posters and we are disinclined to to tolerate libelous statements regardless of their target. “Public persona” is a limited defense and we are more interested in avoiding lawsuits than in winning them.
I can think of no argument in this Forum that has ever been legitimately won by an ad hominem attack on a person. If an “authority” is quoted and someone wishes to discredit that authority, it should be possible to do so by citing actual third party evaluations of their authority and without using personal insults as the basis of one’s attack on their credibility.
As this is more a question about board activity than a philosophical question about internet protocols, I am going to move this to ATMB, where, if it turns into a complaint or a firefight, TubaDiva may move it to the BBQ Pit.
Again, the specifics of this case are not my question.
The Pit is full of people saying all sorts of things about all sorts of specific and named personas. I see, in general, no effort made by the Board to vet these statements. In general the tradition is to let the process proceed of posters putting up the reasons for what they believe. If they are without basis that generally becomes self-evident. If a poster claims that an actress is anorectic, for example, there is no concern that the board is liable for libel. The poster can either prove it or be ridiculed.
On the other end of the spectrum would be a case in which a poster named a specific private person and told a knowingly untrue and harmful thing about them.
But what about the case of someone who makes themself public by creating a web-page about themself? Are public speculations about that person and their motivations fair game? If a poster states that he concludes that the person is a crock and, for the sake of argument the person is not (not something that I believe is true in this specific case but I am making a general discussion here) and the person feels that such statements “harmed them” in some way, is that libel and is a board liable if it is? Is a board responsible for vetting the accuracy of statements made by members?
And no Tom this is NOT a question about this boards activities. It is a debate about the general principal.
I think it should also be noted that this board is not to be used as a battleground for continuing dispute and debate between parties with longstanding disagreement, especially those who are not members of the SDMB in good standing but rather guests who come here to fight their battles and for no other reason. That’s an abuse of the site. Likewise we look unfavorably on our members going to fight someone else on another site, invoking this site in the process.
Sorry. I might just be a bit too close to the recent (and unresolved) hostilities.
Well, my guess would be that libel is whatever six or twelve jurors (depending on venue) under the directions of a judge determine it to be. In terms of a private message board that is operated by a corporation, an additional consideration is whether the corporation has the funds and stamina to fight it out in court–as well as the funds to risk if they encounter a clever attorney and a gullible jury–as to whether an act of libel has occurred. In terms of continuing to run such an operation, discretion is far the better part of valor.
Nasty names directed at persons who are never named, (bosses, employees, co-workers, landlords, renters, mates, ex-mates, etc.) or at persons who are currently named in the news for actions that appear to violate societal norms, (thieves, murderers, rapists, child molestors, politicians), expose such an operation to miniscule risk and in the unlikely event that a frivolous suit was launched, the defense would be relatively inexpensive.
In terms of specific persons lodging specific charges against named third parties who are not publicly accused of illegal activities, the risk rises significantly. It would seem that avoiding unnecessary risks is an appropriate activity for an operation that is intended as a high class amusement rather than as a crusading champion of Truth, Justice, and The American Way such as a newspaper, magazine or electronic news outlet.
(And we seem to challenge the ideas of third parties all the time without actually lodging potentially libelous claims against them.)
Tom~ [ Not the Moderator (The views expressed in this post are not the views of the Chicago Reader, the Straight Dope, or its management or sponsors.)]
Well IANAL. ThanksGott. But it seems to me that both statements have the potential to “harm the reputation of an individual” (as Wikipedia puts it.) But be it as it may, many personas have been alleged to be lieing by posters on these boards - from Bush to Gibson to kids kicked out of school for various reasons to administrators who kicked them out. If it turns out they were not, is that accusation of fraud libel? Is the allegation that the AAP and the CDC are part of an international conspiracy with Pharma to cover-up vaccine toxicity “libel”?
And is a MB responsible for vetting the information or editing out that which they cannot vet?
Yet once againTuba, the actions in this particular case are only the seed for this hoped for debate. I understand why the SDMB would want to avoid getting caught up in the cross-fire of battles that have their origins elsewhere. I appreciate that administrators reconsidered the decision to make the whole thread disappear and instead opened it back up with some ground rules for future posts. I did not create this op to complain about how invertebratish the SDMB powers appeared in initially locking and disappearing the thread. I have no interest in such a discussion and doubt that you have interest either. So please focus on the op, the general debate, not about this particular MB’s practices or actions in any particular case. Thank you.
And Thank you Tom for the on-point response. I guess I take that “fighting ignorance” bit as just the smidgeon more than high class amusement … say a step above Fox and a step below the NY Times.
Gfactor speaking as a board member, not a moderator: DSeid
You want answers to these questions, right?
I’m at work right now. Later tonight, I will try to answer these questions for you as a law school graduate–not as a moderator, not as an attorney licensed in a specific jurisdiction, not as an expert in defamation law. I’ve written about this in at least one thread before. But in the meantime, I’d like to underscore tomndebb’s point. An organization’s potential liability in a given situation is only one factor in any decision it makes. Defending even a frivolous lawsuit can be very expensive; planning for one when the jurisdiction in which it might be filed is unpredictable is complicated.
Let’s start by jumping right to the kernel of the discussion:
Suppose I defame the character of someone with a statement posted here on the SDMB. No quibble about it: I make an assertion about someone that is clearly false, I know it is clearly false, and I make the assertion anyway specifically in order to make everyone think something untrue about the person.
Does the SDMB have any liability if they take no action? Does the SDMB have liability even if they take some action? Does the Chicago Reader have any liability?
Once those questions are answered, we can branch out by making my hypothetical conduct less severe, and see what affect that has upon the analysis.
I remember Penn & Teller made a big point when they started “Bullshit”, that they would be using a lot of words such as “asshole”, “Fuckwit”, “Idiot” because words like “Fraud” and “Liar” would get them sued.
Expressing an opinion (I think) is covered by the constitution. Using a name that has a direct legal meaning is another kettle of fish.
Speaking broadly, DS, the SDMB should have no liability, any more than the Post Office would be liable if someone sent a defamatory letter through the mail. We are a public posting site, and we do not edit what people post, we only delete rules violations.*
However, in the wonderful U.S. of A., anyone can sue anyone for any reason whatsover, including the most frivilous, and the person being sued has to pay the legal fees to defend against groundless accusations. Being certain of ultimate victory doesn’t mean it won’t cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to attain that Pyrrhic victory. Yes, most frivilous suits get thrown out of court early on, but it can still run to high costs. (I personally like the European system where the loser of the lawsuit pays all legal fees. But then, that’s me.)
So, basically, we would rather avoid entanglements altogether.
On a related but tangential note: this is the reason many companies “settle” totally frivilous discrimination suits, brought by an incompetent employee who is fired and claims the firing was discrimination against a member of a protected minority. It’s often cheaper to pay the jackass a few thousand dollars to make the problem go away, rather than pay the lawyers hundreds of thousands to fight for what the company knows is right. Justice has a price.
*- [sub]e.g., deleting quoted material that might arguably violate “fair usage,” disabling links to NSFW sites, fixing quote tags, etc. … usually at the request of the poster.[/sub]
OK. The thread has come back to GD for the discussion of the following topic:
That’s it.
Where is the general boundary in law and ethics regarding the sort of situation described in the quoted text.
Note that this discussion will almost certainly have no bearing on any action on the SDMB; it is a philosophical exploration. (Anything construed as commentary on board actions or construed as attempting to direct board actions will be summarily removed.)
[ /Moderating ]
Fire up your keyboards and have at it–as long as you stick to the topic.
I have only a little to add to the above. I certainly don’t want to get into a hypothetical discussion of what does and doesn’t constitute libel. However, if the question on the floor is what we non-lawyers at the SDMB think is libelous and thus against our rules, it’s a factual allegation that is defamatory on its face made about a readily identifiable individual who is not a public figure. If you think about it, you’ll realize this excludes most of what appears in the Pit, which consists of name-calling about unspecified parties, rants against politicians or celebrities, or other colorful but nonactionable abuse. From what our lawyers tell us, we don’t think we’re on the hook for libel no matter what happens, but we’re not interested in becoming part of the court case that tests this proposition. We’re not about to end an interesting discussion just because we get a huffy letter from someone purporting to be a lawyer, although sometimes we’ll hide things for a time pending consultation. On the other hand, it’s not part of our mission here to determine whether some individual we’ve never heard of before is a liar, fraud, crook, etc. So if we advise you to stick to the issues and avoid further discussion of personalities, please comply.
Given this, is there a distinction between an unresponded to post and a post which has caused the affected person to respond with a request for the post to be removed? In other words, assuming that removal of said posts is going to be the right response, should it be proactive or reactive?
But it’s a mistake to think that public figures can never sue, or that they can’t win. The First Amendment cases merely impose higher standards of proof.
G-factor, like I said, IANAL, so could you summarize the upshot for us some vivavis internet boards.
To me it makes sense that a MB would be in the position of publishing letter to the editor. The authors are not employees, the newspaper is not, I don’t think, responsible for any libel of the writer, is it? But my read of those links seem to suggest that the newspaper would be. Yes? No?
And how does this apply to things like accusations of conspiracy like those I mentioned?
