Can this site be sued?

[hoyaguru]

A website called Traffic Power is suing two website owners for their opinions, and for other people's opinions on a forum. There was a story about it in the Wall Street Journal that you can read HERE.

The two sites being sued are trafficpowersucks.com, a site that warns others about Traffic Power, and SEOBook, a site owned by a guy who wrote a book about SEO and has a forum where people have bashed Traffic Power.

If Traffic Power wins this lawsuit, it will set a precedent, and any site (including Anandtech) may be next on the list. Both sites being sued are asking for donations for legal fees, if you have any money left over after donating to hurricane relief, throw a couple of bucks their way. Apparently Traffic Power has done this to several other sites and the owners took everything off of their site instead of fighting, these two sites have decided to fight it, but the costs to fight something like this can get pretty high. People are calling this a "landmark case" that could affect us all.

If you want to see what kind of company Traffic Power is, just do a search for them on Google, you won't find much love out there...

 

[Vette73]

Should be covered by free speech. Kinda like www.bestbuysux.org

 

[Ipno]

Any site can be sued. Successfully sued, no.

 

[Sentinel]

How rediculous.

 

[hoyaguru]

Originally posted by: Ipno
Any site can be sued. Successfully sued, no.

Yes, that's true. Unfortunately, even with a frivolous lawsuit, it costs a lot of money to defend yourself.

 

[EyeMWing]

Originally posted by: hoyaguru

Originally posted by: Ipno
Any site can be sued. Successfully sued, no.

Yes, that's true. Unfortunately, even with a frivolous lawsuit, it costs a lot of money to defend yourself.

Well in something this obvious, I'd just handle it all myself. Then it only costs time.

 

[eakers]

most websites have a disclaimer that says that the posts are the opinons of the forum goers and not that of the admin.

that said, i'm not sure if they can sue the website for IP addresses so they can sue specific forum members for slander.

 

[JulesMaximus]

Originally posted by: Sentinel
How rediculous.

What's really ridiculous is that out of the two words in your post one is misspelled. :roll:

 

[Syrch]

:disgust:

 

[yllus]

Short version: No.

Long version:
U.S. Code of Law, Section 230 (c)(1):
"No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider." This provision has been uniformly interpreted by the Courts on multiple occasions to provide complete protection against defamation or libel claims made against an ISP, message board or chat room where the statements are made by third parties.

U.S. Code of Law, Section 230 (c)(2):
"Civil liability: No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of (A) any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected; or (B) any action taken to enable or make available to information content providers or others the technical means to restrict access to material described in paragraph (1)(A)."

 

[KoolDrew]

Originally posted by: Sentinel
How rediculous.

 

[hoyaguru]

Originally posted by: EyeMWing

Originally posted by: hoyaguru

Originally posted by: Ipno
Any site can be sued. Successfully sued, no.

Yes, that's true. Unfortunately, even with a frivolous lawsuit, it costs a lot of money to defend yourself.

Well in something this obvious, I'd just handle it all myself. Then it only costs time.

Easier said than done, I think. From what I understand, a person who has been served has a certain time limit to respond, and the response has to be in the correct format. I'd be worried that one small ommision might invalidate the answer, and the person who has been sued would lose automatically. So, the smart thing to do would be to hire a lawyer.

 

[blahblah99]

Originally posted by: yllus
Short version: No.

Long version:
U.S. Code of Law, Section 230 (c)(1):
"No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider." This provision has been uniformly interpreted by the Courts on multiple occasions to provide complete protection against defamation or libel claims made against an ISP, message board or chat room where the statements are made by third parties.

U.S. Code of Law, Section 230 (c)(2):
"Civil liability: No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of (A) any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected; or (B) any action taken to enable or make available to information content providers or others the technical means to restrict access to material described in paragraph (1)(A)."

That's the law that's protecting my website

In the past, people have sued AOL for hosting a message board that contained libel/slander material which was posted by another party and lost the lawsuit because of that law, which is part of the Communications Decency Act.

 

[FleshLight]

Wait, so WTF is traffic power? A spam site that puts "spammy" in links? Wtf is spammy?

 

[hoyaguru]

Originally posted by: FleshLight
Wait, so WTF is traffic power? A spam site that puts "spammy" in links? Wtf is spammy?

You can read about them on the trafficpowersucks page (link), or just do a search on Google for "Traffic Power". You'll find hundreds of sites about them, none of them saying anything good.

The guy at SEO Book is apparently being sued for stuff that other people had written on the forum on his site. That would be like the owners of Anandtech getting sued for something written on this forum. Doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, but I guess anybody can sue anybody, whether they have an actual reason or not. If somehow Traffic Power was to win this suit, my guess is that anyone with a forum or blog or whatever would be in danger of being sued, as there would be precedent. I don't see how Traffic Power could possibly win in court, but then again, I couldn't see how a jury could find OJ innocent...