stories filed under: "libel"
Australian Online Forum Sued Because Users Wrote How They Didn't Like Accounting Software Package
from the safe-harbors-anyone? dept
While there are lots of problematic laws when it comes to the internet, two things that the US got right (though, in otherwise troublesome laws) was putting in various "safe harbor" provisions that protect service providers from the actions of their users, whether it's for copyright infringement (in the DMCA) or libel (in the CDA). Folks in other countries aren't so lucky, leading to all sorts of questionable lawsuits that seem to be a lot more about silencing critics than dealing with actual libel or infringement. The latest such story comes from Australia. Reader technofear writes in to let us know that a popular Australian online forum (and the guy who owns it) is being sued by a software firm because a number of forum users posted negative reviews of their software -- which the firm considers defamatory. As the article explains, the software firm is going to have quite a difficult time proving the case, because the company would need to show the statements were false (pretty hard to do when they seem to be of the nature of "we threw it out recently... many hundreds of lost hours of work and high stress levels was not worth it") and that forum owner had malicious intent... and then also show that the company lost money due to these postings. However, in the meantime, the company can tie up the owner of the site in a costly legal battle. If there were clear safe harbors, it would be much easier to fight back and hope for a quick summary judgment throwing the case out. In the meantime, some folks are pointing out that, as should be expected these days, the accounting software that got all these awful reviews is getting plenty of attention, but all of it is associated with the fact that the product isn't very good and the company apparently doesn't handle criticism well. Perhaps next time the company will learn to engage and respond to critics rather than trying to shut them up by suing the site that hosted their complaints.Filed Under: australia, libel, safe harbors, service providers
Canadian Supreme Court Tosses Out Politician's Libel Lawsuit Against Yahoo
from the a-small-victory-for-the-wrong-reasons dept
Earlier this year, we pointed out that a member of the Green Party up in Canada was apparently suing a ton of websites just for allowing comments about him that he did not like or find to be true. There were some really bizarre aspects to the case -- which seemed to highlight those of us in the US should be happy about section 230 of the CDA protecting service providers from the actions of their users. Canada doesn't have similar protections, and this guy sued Yahoo, Wikipedia, MySpace and many others, not because of anything those sites did, but because he didn't like messages posted by users of those sites. In fact, the guy seemed rather quick on the lawsuit trigger, leading many to accuse him of doing this to hide criticism, rather than to fend off actually libelous statements.While many of those cases are still in process, Michael Geist (who is apparently also being sued by this guy) lets us know that the British Columbia Supreme Court dismissed (with costs) the libel lawsuit the guy had filed against Yahoo, noting that it was not at all clear that it had jurisdiction over the case, since Yahoo was in the US and the guy had presented no evidence that the supposedly defamatory postings were "accessed, downloaded, and read by someone in British Columbia." Of course, there appear to be plenty of other reasons why this case should have been thrown out, but the court didn't even bother to get into them in dismissing the case for no evidence that it was the proper jurisdiction. There are still plenty of other such cases to go through, though -- so I'm sure we'll be hearing more.
Filed Under: canada, jurisdiction, laws, libel
Saying The DOS Microsoft Originally Used Was A Rip-Off Isn't Libel
from the talk-about-sore-winners dept
Back in 2005, we wrote about the case of Tim Paterson, the creator of QDOS (which was eventually sold to Microsoft and became the basis of Microsoft DOS -- and, with it, the Microsoft empire). Paterson was pissed off at author Harold Evans for claiming in a book that Paterson had ripped off Gary Kildall's CP/M. It really isn't disputed that QDOS was modeled on CP/M -- or that Microsoft (and Paterson) eventually won out in the marketplace. So it's hard to see what the beef is here, and as Slashdot points out, it appears the judge agreed. The judge tossed out the suit saying that there didn't appear to be any libel in what was said. Most of the statements were opinions, so they can't be shown to be provably false. Also, they found no evidence of malicious intent, which would also be needed in this case. In the end, though, this certainly seems like the case of a sore winner. Paterson's software was the one that went on to greatness, whether or not it was a rip-off over Kildall's stuff.