Free Speech Trumps Defamation…
The following is quoted from Patricia Keefe’s column in InformationWeek Daily Newsletter, Friday, Oct. 7, 2005, issue. There are potentially significant implications for all bloggers as such cases and rulings unfold across the States.
The Delaware Supreme Court has ruled in favor of a group of anonymous bloggers in a defamation suit, saying in essence that free speech trumps defamation. (If that’s true, there’s no point to the concept of defamation.)
In his ruling, Delaware Chief Justice Myron Steele compared anonymous Internet speech to anonymous political pamphleteering, a practice the U.S. Supreme Court has apparently found to be “an honorable tradition of advocacy and dissent.” (Bad choice for comparison, if you ask me, since characterizing the latter as a gutless tradition of cowardly attacks would be more accurate.) And that 1995 ruling seems contradictory. We insist on the identification of the sponsors behind political advertising–so why would pamphlets be treated any differently?
The Associated Press report also quoted Steele as saying that plaintiffs who feel wronged by anonymous online comments can use the Internet to respond to character attacks and “generally set the record straight.” He also said blogs and chat rooms tend to be vehicles for people to express opinions, not facts.
That seems pretty naive to me. It’s laughable to think you’d have a prayer of a rebuttal reaching even half the people who saw the initial posting, never mind the follow-up comments and other versions.
Delaware’s ruling is just the latest in a series of reports that all seem to have at their core the idea that anything online, and more specific to this note, blogging, is some sort of “you can’t touch this–or me” free-for-all. Nuh-uh. Blogging isn’t a license for irresponsible, slanderous, or cruel behavior. If people could just manage to disagree firmly, but politely, this case wouldn’t even exist.
I for one fully agree with Ms. Keefe’s concluding statement, which bears repeating:
Blogging isn’t a license for irresponsible, slanderous, or cruel behavior. If people could just manage to disagree firmly, but politely, this case wouldn’t even exist.
More of Ms. Keefe’s article can be read in her blog entry at Information Week.
Even though the concept of blogging is still quite young, it is not too early for all of us to monitor and police ourselves to minimize the liklihood of some over-zealous politician or bureaucrat seizing the opportunity to regulate our activities. Don’t laugh…the fools we have in Washington today would do it in a heart beat. All they need is a half-vast reason…
2 Comments so far
Yes, it does leave you wondering about where does this leave the concept of defamation?
I handle it by thinking of my blog as a doorway onto the information superhighway. I bar no one from passing along that highway to other destinations, but when they come through ~my door~, I have the right to regulate them. This makes me somewhat unpopular with the wingnut mafia, but I faithfully allow any post which is not blatantly offensive to stand. (Yes, some posts are moderated for language, but that’s mostly to keep the spamalots at bay.)
There’s no handling the behavior of others. As you suggest, I manage myself. I don’t visit wingnut blogs because, to be frank, I am not interested in what they have to say. We’d do better by focusing on what could be right about our country that by paying attention to that lot. They live to defame: we must live to make this land prosper and wreak true good.
I must disagree. Free speech is THE most important law and right we have. I don’t like others’ opinion, but I will fight to the death their right to voice it. If they wish to spread lies, rumors and gossip, again, that is their right. If people choose to believe everything they hear and/or read, that is their right too.
Is it illegial for someone to take out a billboard with a message that badmouths someone?
Is it illegial for someone to put a sign in their yard that berates a neighbor?
Is it illegial to write a rumor on the dust on the back window of your own minivan? What about bumper stickers? What about those doohickies that flap behind low flying airplanes over beaches?
We cannot cut free speech in one place and not another. If a person wishes to be an idiot on the ‘net, through a bumper sticker, or through a podium with the presidential seal on it, I say let ‘em.
Free speech = free listening. You don’t gotta speak it and you don’t gotta listen to it. And better yet, you don’t gotta care.