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Story Link The Great Linkin' Debate: Finding Defamation in Cyberspace

By Brenda Sandburg The Recorder/Cal Law February 8, 2000

The courts are delving into yet another legal question that has arisen in the cyberspace age: If your Web site links to another site, are you liable for the content on that site?

A San Francisco professor thinks so. He has sued both the creator of a Web site posting student reviews of his teaching and a student group linking to the site.

Last October, Daniel Curzon Brown filed a class action on behalf of himself and other professors at San Francisco City College. The lawsuit, Curzon Brown v. San Francisco Community College District, filed in San Francisco Superior Court, seeks an injunction against the posting of defamatory comments on the Teacher Review Web site. The site, created and operated by a former City College student, consists of student critiques of City College professors. A trial date has been set for March 29.

But Robert Meyers, a partner at Steinhart & Falconer who is representing Associated Students of City College -- the student group maintains its own Web site that links to Teacher Review -- says the issue of liability by linking is addressed by current law.

"Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and basic defamation law prevents suing one Web site that links to another alleged to have [committed] defamation," says Meyers. Otherwise, he adds, any Web site could be sued for the content on any site it links to.

James Chadwick, an associate in Gray Cary Ware & Freidenrich's Palo Alto, Calif. office, agrees. "In defamation there is a republication rule that says the republisher is liable in the same way as the original publisher or speaker," says Chadwick. "Is simply providing a link to another site adequate to constitute republication? I think that's a stretch." And what about original publications on the Internet? Can those posting opinions be held liable for defamation? The American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing the creator of the Teacher Review site, contends that the material is protected under the First Amendment.

"If the legal theories underlying [Curzon Brown's] claims had any merit, no on-line forum for the exchange of views on any topic interesting enough to be controversial could survive the risk of suit by self-appointed guardians of 'correct' thinking like plaintiff," reads part of an ACLU brief prepared in response to the professor's suit.

Curzon Brown, for his part, believes the Internet provides a forum for people to libel others with impunity. "Anyone can send in a review lying about you for the world to read, and you can't respond," he says. "It's just like McCarthyism." The anonymous comments posted about Curzon Brown on the Teacher Review site are very harsh. According to his complaint, Curzon Brown has been called a "racist," "emotionally unbalanced" and "mentally ill." According to the complaint, he also has been accused on the Teacher Review site of "violent mood swings, irrational personal attacks on students, and insane progressions in thought."

"You would be sued for libel if you published anything like this in a newspaper," Curzon Brown said.

Copyright ) 1999 ALM IP, LLC -- American Lawyer Media. All rights reserved.

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-- Dee (T1Colt556@aol.com), February 08, 2000