The Case Of The Forwarded Email

from the legal-questions dept

Salon takes a close look at the implications of a libel suit involving a forwarded internet message will have on interpretations of the law. A possibly libelous email was forwarded on a newsletter mailing list by the guy who maintains that list. Now both the author of the email and the maintainer of the list are being sued. The question is whether or not the list maintainer is guilty of anything - and it brings up a number of questions. The biggest one is whether or not he qualifies as an ISP, which would give him protection from content provided by others. I would guess this argument won't stand - simply because he approved the email being added to his newsletter. The ISP argument only makes sense when the ISP has no control over what's being said. Of course, he may still be able to win on some of his other points.