Sticks and Stones
Hear ye! Hear ye! The California Supreme Court ruled unanimously to support “a vibrant and robust Internet, fostering the principles of free speech"
in a controversial case involving third-party defamatory content.
Basically, they are granting immunity to all Internet users and providers.
That means, yes, we can still say whatever we want about whomever we want,
wherever we want – as long as it’s not in our own words i.e. original work.
Power to “citizen journalists” (read: gossipmongers) everywhere! If you haven’t
learned how to copy & paste yet, now is the time.
The other stipulation is that the vicious, nasty, slanderous libel must
remain in cyberspace. It cannot be published in print on put on the air, or
else it will have to adhere to the usual rules of journalism and decency. (Did
I really just use those two words in the same sentence?)
“The notion of fact-checking and verifying things doesn’t apply to the
Internet,” complained Christopher E. Grell, who represented the two doctors in
the case who claim they were defamed by
So how did they win? Apparently, it wasn’t too hard, as the decision was consistent with other courts’ rulings. The defense used the argument that Internet publications, unlike
hard-copy, are flexible, so users can “immediately respond and correct any
harm.” Well, I’m all for free speech and everything, but that argument sounds pretty
weak to me. I mean, if someone called me “arrogant, bizarre, closed minded;
emotionally disturbed, professionally incompetent, intellectually dishonest … a
quack, a thug, a bully, [and] a Nazi,” well, I think I’d be pretty hurt. And pissed.
However, in the spirit of the Supreme Court ruling, we would like to say that Digital Axle accepts, and in fact encourages, any and all third-party ‘defamatory content’. Has somebody written something terrible about us? Quick! Copy! Paste!
