Zebulon Brodie, the owner of a Dunkin’ Donuts on the Eastern Shore, “argued to Maryland’s highest court yesterday that the host of an online forum should be forced to reveal the identities of people who posted allegedly defamatory comments” about his eatery. The comments were posted at NewsZap.com. (Henri E. Cauvin, “Md. Court Weighs Internet Anonymity”, Washington Post, Dec. 9; Citizen Media Law, Dec. 11).
Posts Tagged ‘online speech’
ApartmentRatings.com commenters sued
ApartmentRatings.com is a site that invites users to post their opinions about good and bad experiences as renters with particular buildings, complexes and landlords. The owners of two Bay area apartment complexes, Parkmerced in San Francisco and Larkspur Shores in Larkspur, have now sued eighteen unnamed defendants over negative comments such as “Construction noise, poor management, tacky decor, and an indifferent staff”, “I do not think the new management is sincerely trying to improve anything”, “stay far away and never look back,”, “worst place I’ve ever lived”, and “a real dump”. The real estate firms, Parkmerced Investors Properties LLC and Stellar Larkspur Partners LLC, claim libel, tortious interference with contract, and perhaps most creatively violations of the federal Lanham Act (their basis for getting into federal court). The Lanham Act is more usually encountered in complaints of false advertising, but the plaintiffs say it applies here “because Defendants misrepresent the nature, characteristics and qualities of the Apartments”. (Sam Bayard, Citizen Media Law, Nov. 24). According to CalBizLit (Nov. 20):
The two plaintiffs allege that “on information and belief” the posting reviewers included persons who were not tenants, but were employees, agents, etc. of competing apartment house communities. “On information and belief.” That’s often lawyer language for “I got no idea whether it’s true or not, but let’s do some discovery and see what happens.”
Microblog 2008-11-10
- Mark Lilla: pick either faux populism or intellectual conservatism, you can’t have both [WSJ] #
- P.J. O’Rourke on where conservatives went wrong [Weekly Standard] #
- And how exactly did those mountain goats get up there without wings? [Flickr “Roger 80” h/t @coolpics] #
- Scotland authorities trawl social networking sites, then slap teen with £200 fine for posing with sword on Bebo [Massie] #
- “Victims’ rights” sound like lovely idea but can undermine fairness and practicality of criminal justice system [Greenfield] #
- Bizarre Czech case: driver hits, then tries to murder pedestrian, victim survives only to be sued by car’s owner [Feral Child] #
- Auto bailout would leave Big 3 in interest-group coils, bankruptcy could cut the knots [Bainbridge h/t @erwiest] #
- ACORN as the gang that couldn’t intimidate straight [PoL] #
- “Talked about in CivPro” I hope favorably [@sqfreak] #
- More public stirrings against traffic cameras [Jeff Nolan] #
Microblog 2008-11-01
- Australia joins Axis of Internet Censorship [The Australian h/t Mike Elgan; Volokh] #
- Circa-1900 neighborhoods with porches are my favorite for trick-or-treating. #
- “Our companies have been spending 100s of 1000s of dollars per case fighting off patent trolls” [A VC, h/t Pete Warden] #
Bullied by Dozier, ISPs took down customer’s sites
Waving threats of “contributory trademark infringement” and the like, Virginia lawyer and emerging Overlawyered favorite John Dozier has gotten more than one hosting intermediary to yank the Dozier-critical websites of opponent Ronald Riley. (Paul Alan Levy, Consumer Law & Policy, Oct. 3). “Unfortunately, when faced with a legal threat, many hosting sites will sacrifice your freedom of speech and send you looking for a new home on the Internet.” (David Ardia, Citizen Media Law Project, Oct. 9)(earlier). More: Ryan Gile, Las Vegas Trademark Attorney (via Ron Coleman).
Claim: link on our name pointing elsewhere infringes trademark
Attorney John Dozier has already made a couple of memorable appearances in this space, first when he asserted in a cease and desist letter that it would violate copyright law for his target to post the text of that cease and desist letter in part or in full on the web, and shortly thereafter when one of the clients of his Dozier Internet Law firm, an outfit known as Inventor-Net, purported to “strictly prohibit any links and or other unauthorized references to our web site without our permission”; Dozier’s own site had a user agreement which purported to ban linking to the site, using the firm’s name “in any manner” without permission, or even looking at the site’s source code.
Now the Virginia-based attorney is attracting attention with a new legal battle against Ronald J. Riley, a Michigan inventor and patent-law activist who has harshly criticized Dozier (and many others) in online posts and comments. Among other tactics, Riley has set up “sucks” websites that vilify Dozier and his law firm and turn up in search results on Dozier’s name. Dozier’s lawsuit against Riley invokes not defamation law, as might have been expected, but trademark law, and its most curious provision is #25, which complains that it is a trademark violation for Riley’s site to base a hyperlink on the phrase “Dozier Internet Law” and have it lead to Riley’s own attacks on the Dozier firm rather than to the Dozier firm’s site. Of course it’s long been common in online commentary to link on someone’s name and have the link point somewhere scathingly critical of them (e.g., “Erin Brockovich“). Dozier claims, perhaps implausibly, that potential clients will suffer confusion between Riley’s services and his own.
Paul Alan Levy at Public Citizen’s Consumer Law & Policy Blog writes (Oct. 2):
Although Dozier filed his lawsuit, he does not seem to have served it on Riley. Instead, he has used the making of a claim for trademark infringement to warn the hosts of Riley’s web site that if they do not take the web site down they risk a further display of Dozier’s wrath, directed at them. See here, here, and here. And his invocation of trademark law was very crafty, because although the Communications Decency Act immunizes ISP’s from liability for most claims based on the content of web sites that they host, that immunity does not extend to trademark claims.
Public Citizen has now sued for a declaratory judgment that Riley is not liable to Dozier on trademark grounds. The conflict has even aroused sympathy for Riley on TechDirt, among whose editors he had been anything but popular before.
U.K.: “Government to ban suicide-promoting websites”
One assumes that in the U.S., the First Amendment would restrain the government from regulating this variety of online content. Not so in Britain, where parliamentarians frankly avow their intent to shut down websites that morbidly encourage notions of self-destruction. “I would recommend that publishers who moderate all comments on their forums or chat rooms should silence discussions that encourage suicide, and sites that rely on others to complain about material before they review it should take down such discussions if complaints are received,” said technology lawyer Struan Robertson. What would have happened to Goethe’s Sorrows of Young Werther? (Out-Law News, Sept. 18, via @lawtweets).
Blog-comment speechcrimes in Canada
“Anyone who runs an online message board, from the lowliest vanity blogger to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, can be charged under federal human rights law if visitors to their site post hateful comments, according to the Canadian Human Rights Commission. … ‘If a message board owner can’t manage to ensure the content of the message board is complying with Canadian law, then the message board should not be operating,’ [CHRC lawyer Margot Blight] said.” (National Post via Western Standard Shotgun blog; more; StageLeft.info via Reynolds).
Judge reluctant to dismiss MySpace suicide case
“The use of the anti-hacking law to charge [Lori] Drew [in a notorious case of identity-hoax cruelty whose target committed suicide] was criticized by experts who said it set a dangerous precedent that could potentially make a felon out of anyone who violated the terms of service of any website — a prospect that is particularly troubling, they said, because terms-of-service agreements sometimes contain onerous provisions, are often arbitrarily and unilaterally changed by companies, and are rarely read by users.” (Kim Zetter, Wired News, Sept. 5). Earlier: May 16.
A question about the AutoAdmit litigation
The WSJ Law Blog reports that the two Yale Law women suing AutoAdmit/XOXOHTH posters are “seeking to resolve their claims against these defendants” without amending the complaint to name their identities, obtained over the course of a variety of subpoenas. Thus, the recent amended complaint named only a single AutoAdmit poster, Matthew C. Ryan, who had apparently refused to settle–perhaps because while Ryan’s comments were obnoxious, they were not legally actionable.
Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t it historically the case that someone who says “Pay me money or I will file a lawsuit and issue press releases that reveal private facts you find to be embarrassing” guilty of blackmail or extortion in other contexts? What distinguishes this case–especially when the underlying allegations are so legally flimsy?