Court Says That Taking Down Content After Nastygram Isn't An Agreement To Never Discuss Again

from the good-ruling dept

Wed, Mar 14th 2007 11:06pm — Mike Masnick

Over on Dave Farber's Interesting People mailing list, there's news that an Appeals Court has found that simply taking content offline after a lawyer nastygrams you is not an agreement to stop discussing the subject. In the case at hand, an unhappy patient of Lasik eye surgery created an anti-Lasik website where he trashed his doctor. The doctor got upset, and his lawyers nastygrammed the website owner -- who, like many people when first nastygrammed, pulled the site offline. A trial court said that, in taking down the content, the website owner was effectively giving up his right to discuss the doctors again -- which seems quite stifling of free speech. Luckily, the Appeals Court agreed and found that taking down content is not the same as waiving your First Amendment rights. Note that this is entirely separate from the question of whether or not the content itself was defamatory -- but just whether the action of taking down the content is some sort of agreement to give up the right to discuss the topic.

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10 Comments

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TriZz, 14 Mar 2007 @ 11:43pm

write versus right
"...the website owner was effectively giving up his write to discuss the doctors again..."

Yeah...sometimes righting about the writes of others while using your rite hand can be difficult.
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Mike (profile), 15 Mar 2007 @ 12:01am

Re: write versus right
Yeah...sometimes righting about the writes of others while using your rite hand can be difficult.

Oops. Fixed. Thanks!
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Anonymous Coward, 15 Mar 2007 @ 5:08am

Re: write versus right
your rite hand? =P

I agree with the final decision. Just because I listen to you the first time doesn't mean I have to listen to you all the time. I mean, what if the guy just wanted to take it down because he thought he might get in trouble for what he wrote. Then once he found out it wasn't, he put it back up. I don't see why that should be wrong. So I'm glad this came out well.
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modef, 15 Mar 2007 @ 5:32am

Re: Re: write versus right
who cares what you agree with? we arent talking about you so whatever you may agree or disagree with is really so much crap.
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chris (profile), 15 Mar 2007 @ 6:28am

that's a dangerous precedent
if the courts aren't careful then a letter from an attorney will no longer be the only tool you need to intimidate people into submission.

next thing you know there will be satire and criticism everywhere.
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Wolfger, 15 Mar 2007 @ 7:17am

Re: Re: write versus right
"your rite hand?"

Yeah. You know... the hand he performs rituals with. :-D
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Lar, 15 Mar 2007 @ 7:20am

Re: Re: Re: write versus right
At least his comments were somewhat on topic contrary to what you had to say. What is a blog for if not opinion? It would get boring real quickly if every post started "the fact of the matter is.." If that turns out to be the case, I'll just head to NPR.
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EdB, 15 Mar 2007 @ 8:04am

Re: that's a dangerous precedent
OH NO! PLEASE tell me we won't have sarcasm and criticism of stupid crap like yours everywhere! I don't think I could stand to see sarcasm and criticism of mindless fuckmonkeys on the internet.
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Fuckmonkey#9, 15 Mar 2007 @ 8:57am

Who you calling a fuck monkey?!!! Oh wait...
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Anonymous Coward, 15 Mar 2007 @ 9:57am

Well, that doctor did a bang-up job keeping this news from getting out. I had never heard about these Lasik Eye Surgery problems until this lawsuit appeared.
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