The Jailhouse

[DABOSS]

Free-er Speech on the Net
How comparable is content posted on the Internet to content published in, say, a newspaper? Not comparable at all, a federal court decided last week, and the ruling may have broad implications for many people who post content to the Web, including Web loggers (bloggers), and participants in collaborative communication forums. The ruling, which came from the Ninth Circuit Court of appeals, stems from a legal dispute involving the republication online of a defamatory message. In the summer of 1999, a handyman named Robert Smith was working for an attorney named Ellen Batzel at her home in North Carolina. According to Smith, Batzel told him and others that she was related to Nazi party officials including Heinrich Himmler. Smith said that Batzel also told him that some of the paintings in her house were inherited. Smith thought the paintings had actually been stolen, though. The full story of how this evolved into a court case is here.

"In the end, the Ninth Circuit Court found that "there is no reason inherent in the technological features of cyberspace why First Amendment and defamation law should apply differently in cyberspace than in the brick and mortar world."


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ATTICA, ATTICA

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,1178562,00.asp