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Blogging and Defamation
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The internet has turned the world of communication upside down and areas of the law connected to media---such as defamation--are still staggering around like drunk party-goers trying to figure out which way to go.
We had this nice set of laws which continually balanced the privacy of the individual against the First Amendment right to free speech. This balancing act has been going on for a couple of centuries and in the last fifty years we developed a pretty good set of rules and requirements so everybody understood what they could say (true vs. false) and about whom they could say it (private person vs. public figure).
Enter the blog and the comments made on blogs. Which way would the balance go? To the individual? Or to the First Amendment right to free speech?
Right now, the weight of American cases are coming down on the side of free speech. Judges are more inclined to see blogs as a ”vehicle for the expression of opinions” rather than “ . . . a source of facts and data upon which a reasonably person would rely.” *
Does this mean that reasonable people don’t believe anything they read on the internet? I don’t think so. Although statements like that make it clear that the courts are more interested in protecting “coarse conversation” because that would also be protecting the autonomy (or independence) of ordinary people who use the internet.**
Just remember that the law is always changing and evolving. We often think of the law as we think of Moses and the Ten Commandment. The rules are set in stone and remain unchanged as eons go bye. But that is not how law works.
In this country, Congress passes the laws and courts tell you what the laws means---as well as when where and how it is to be used. As each new situation is brought to court, judges will often need to interpret or reinterpret the law to see how it applies to this new situation. Since we don’t know how the law will be seen in the future, all we can do right now is look at the trends. And right now the trend is: power to the blogger.
But, a precautionary note: trends change. And there will always be courts that buck the trends. For example, a woman in Florida sued a blogger for defamatory posts--and won a 11.3 million dollar reward.
*: John Doe No.1 v. Cahill, 884 A.2d 451 (2005)
** Dimeo v. Max, 433 F.Supp.2d 523 (2006)
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