E-Commerce Law

E-Commerce Law Briefs: Week of March 17, 2008

We thought JuicyCampus might be the next Internet gossip site to suffer from unwanted legal scrutiny and it turns out we were right:  New Jersey law enforcement officials have been investigating JuicyCampus for at least a month and claim that the site violates the state's Consumer Fraud Act.

(Links:  Gossip Gone Wild at ABC News and College gossip site under scrutiny at Yahoo! News)

A Vermont court has applied Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act in dismissing a defamation suit brought against the operators of iBrattleboro.com.

(Link:  Libel Suit Tossed Against Local News Site at Media Law)

E-Commerce Law Briefs is a weekly feature appearing each Friday afternoon on E-Commerce Law. Each week, E-Commerce Law Briefs will provide a brief summary and commentary on recent legal news affecting e-commerce businesses.

JuicyCampus May Be the Next Internet Defamation Battleground

Litigation over Internet defamation has grown as Internet users increasingly visit, and post to, unmoderated forums about their colleagues and acquaintances.  Following in the footsteps of sites like AutoAdmit, a new college gossip website has become a popular forum for anonymous and potentially damaging postings about students, professors, and others.

E-Commerce Law Briefs: Week of February 11, 2008

Yahoo has rejected Microsoft's $45 billion purchase offer.  "The rejection was not a surprise and had been expected by investors since late last week. Some believe this is part of an effort by Yahoo to get a higher sales price from Microsoft."

(Link:  Yahoo says "No" to Microsoft at CNN Money)

We've previously mentioned the importance of controlling your online reputation, now an entire cottage industry is beginning to grow around that concept.  A host of new companies offer services designed to repair a person or company's Internet reputation.

(Link:  Google Yourself - And Enjoy It at Newsweek)

E-Commerce Law Briefs is a weekly feature appearing each Friday afternoon on E-Commerce Law. Each week, E-Commerce Law Briefs will provide a brief summary and commentary on recent legal news affecting e-commerce businesses.

Take Control of Your Online Reputation

At the DC Bar presentation last week, I was asked what practical tips I would give to attorneys who are interested in protecting or enhancing their reputations online. Aside from the usual advice I would give any attorney about protecting their reputation, I suggested the following:

"David Lat Has a Stupid Fat Face"

This afternoon I spoke at a DC Bar event entitled "Practicing Law in the e-Court of Public Opinion:  How the Internet Can Make Or Break Your Reputation and What You Can Do About It" with David Lat, Carolyn Elefant, Mark Britton, and Andrew Mirsky.  I found it to be a profoundly interesting and educational experience.

Practicing Law in the e-Court of Public Opinion: How the Internet Can Make Or Break Your Reputation and What You Can Do About It

Next Thursday, January 24, 2008, I'll be speaking at a DC Bar event entitled "Practicing Law in the e-Court of Public Opinion:  How the Internet Can Make Or Break Your Reputation and What You Can Do About It."  I'll be on a panel with Andrew Mirsky, moderated by Carolyn Elefant, discussing the role of the First Amendment and defamation law in protecting an attorney's reputation and providing practical tips for attorneys who want to protect or enhance their online reputation.

Other speakers at the event include David Lat, Editor-in-Chief of Above the Law; Mark Britton, CEO, President and Co-founder of Avvo.com; and Carolyn Elefant of MyShingle and Legal Blogwatch.  If you can't be in Washington, DC to attend the event in person, you can sign up to listen in by telephone.

See this press release for more details.

E-Commerce Law Briefs: Week of December 10, 2007

A Georgia couple has filed a second Internet defamation lawsuit, this time against a person who posted allegations that the couple is involved in illegal drug activity. The couple previously filed a $1 million suit against the website that published the post. Unless we’re missing something, the couple’s attorney is probably going to get an education on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

(Link: Web site post leads to second law suit at Rome News-Tribune.com)

A Texas appellate court has ruled that an anonymous blogger has a First Amendment right to anonymity in a defamation lawsuit unless the plaintiff can demonstrate that it has suffered actual financial losses due to the defendant’s defamatory postings.

(Link: Court upholds Paris blogger's anonymity at Houston Chronicle)

E-Commerce Law Briefs is a weekly feature appearing each Friday afternoon on E-Commerce Law. Each week, E-Commerce Law Briefs will provide a brief summary and commentary on recent legal news affecting e-commerce businesses.

Calder "Effects Test" Applied to Internet Defamation Case

In early November, the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas applied the "effects test" set forth by the United States Supreme Court in Calder v. Jones, 465 U.S. 783 (1984), to deny a defendant’s motion to dismiss an Internet defamation case for lack of personal jurisdiction.

The case, McVea v. Crisp, 2007 WL 4205648 (W.D. Tex. 2007), involves allegedly defamatory statements posted on the website www.thealamofilm.com concerning the research and works of Denise McVea and Jeff Dunn relating to historical figures from Texas. Plaintiff filed suit in Texas; defendant acknowledged authoring the offending posts but filed a motion to dismiss the case for lack of personal jurisdiction under Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(2).

New Jersey Court Finds Personal Jurisdiction Over California Resident Who Directed Defamatory Statements to Forum

In Goldhaber v. Kohlenberg, the Appellate Division of the Superior Court of New Jersey has affirmed a trial court ruling that a New Jersey court could exercise in personam jurisdiction over a California resident who posted defamatory statements to an Internet newsgroup, where the statements were directed at the forum state.

The Court first acknowledged that traditional jurisdiction principles apply even in the context of cases based upon Internet communications; thus, "[t]he question is whether ‘the defendant’s conduct and connection with the forum State are such that he should reasonable anticipate being haled into court there.’" Blakey v. Continental Airlines, 164 N.J. 38, 67 (2000) (quoting World-Wide Volkswagon Corp. v. Woodson, 444 U.S. 286, 297, 100 S.Ct. 559, 567, 62 L.Ed.2d 490, 501 (1980)).  Obviously, posting a statement on the Internet that could be read in the forum state, just as it could be read virtually anywhere else in the world, is not sufficient to subject the poster to in personam jurisdiction. However, where the effects of a defamatory statement would be felt in the forum state (where the plaintiff resides or does business) and the statement is directed or targeted to that forum, the poster's contacts with the forum are sufficient to impose personal jurisdiction. See id. at 70 (citing Calder v. Jones, 465 U.S. 783, 104 S.Ct. 1482, 70 L.Ed.2d 804 (1984)) (adopting the "effects" test for personal jurisdiction set forth by the United States Supreme Court).

In Goldhaber, the Court found that

[t]he author not only knew that plaintiffs resided in New Jersey, he knew the municipality in which they resided and made specific disparaging references to that municipality in many of his postings. . . . He also made insulting comments about that municipality’s police department. In addition, he referred to plaintiffs’ neighbors in the apartment complex in which they resided and at one point even posted their address.

Accordingly, the Court held that defendant should reasonably have anticipated being haled into court in New Jersey.

Technorati Tags:  personal jurisdiction, defamation, Internet

The CDA Has Killed Traditional Concepts of Defamation Law

In The ‘Course Conversation’ of Tucker Max: Are Traditional Concepts of Defamation Law Dead? we discussed a case in which the United District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania held that the Communications that Section 509 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) bars a defamation claim based upon anonymous postings to a message board not authored by the defendant. Obviously, application of the CDA in that context represents a substantial (and potentially troubling) departure from the common law of defamation.

Eric Goldman’s Technology & Marketing Law Blog points us to an article which demonstrates that the court’s interpretation of the CDA in the Tucker Max case is far from unusual. Of the 55 reported cases in which the CDA was raised in defense of tort claims, the plaintiff prevailed only 7 times. With more and more people communicating over the Internet, traditional concepts of defamation law may indeed be dead.

For more information, see Wikipedia and 230 and a Great 230 Case Law Resource on Eric Goldman’s Technology & Marketing Law Blog.

Update (8/28/2006):  InternetCases.com has an excellent post about a recent CDA case involving the "infamous" owners of Ripoffreport.com.  The reported activities of the owners of Ripoffreport.com may be reason enough to be troubled by the overbreadth of the CDA.

Technorati Tags:  defamation, cda