False Light

Over the next few weeks I'll be posting about various topics we cover in the CMLP's Citizen Media Legal Guide.  If you would like to read any of the previous "highlights" from the guide, you can find them here. 

Today, I'll start with the risks associated with publishing online (for information on the legal risks associated with gathering, as opposed to publishing, information, see the Newsgathering section of the CMLP's legal guide).  Every time you publish something online, whether it's a news article, blog post, podcast, video, or even a user comment, you open yourself up to potential legal liability. This shouldn't come as too much of a surprise because the Internet, after all, is available to anyone who wishes to connect to the network, and even the smallest blog or most obscure discussion forum has the potential to reach hundreds of millions of people throughout the world.

Often the legal risks are small, but not always. The risks you could face when you publish online can take a number of forms, depending on what and how you publish. This post and the legal guide sections it links to are not intended to make you an expert on media law, but merely to help you identify potential "red flags" so that when you publish something that might result in liability, you will know to be extra careful and will take the necessary steps to minimize your potential legal risks.

Let's start with the more obvious risks.   read more »

Breaking news from Above the Law: Anthony Ciolli, former defendant in the controversial AutoAdmit case, has filed a lawsuit in Pennsylvania state court against the two plaintiffs in that case, their lawyers, ReputationDefender and one of its employees, and the shadowy "T14 Talent." He alleges wrongful initiation of civil proceedings, abuse of process, libel, slander, false light invasion of privacy, tortious interference with contract, and unauthorized use of name or likeness. It looks like Ciolli has outed one of the pseudonymous defendants in the AutoAdmit case -- "pauliewalnuts."

Here's the complaint -- we're still digesting it.

Update:  I didn't mean to be snarky about this lawsuit. Assuming that his allegations are true, I have a lot of sympathy for Ciolli, and he appears to have some actionable claims. Marc Randazza, his attorney in the AutoAdmit case, has a thoughtful post on the new lawsuit.

Pittsburgh lawyer Todd Hollis is back in court with a second lawsuit against the dating advice site Don'tDateHimGirl.com, whose users accused him of infidelity and infecting women with herpes. Hollis had previously filed a defamation lawsuit in Pennsylvania state court against the owner of the site back in June 2006. The Florida-based web site and its owner Tasha Joseph were able to have that case dismissed for lack of personal jurisdiction.

Acting as his own lawyer, Hollis filed a new complaint in federal court in Miami last week, alleging defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and false light invasion of privacy. Hollis told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that

he reluctantly sued again in Miami because Ms. Cunningham refused to remove the numerous lies that her Web site has published about him. "I never wanted to file a lawsuit. I wanted my name cleared," he said yesterday.

Tasha Cunningham, formerly known as Tasha Joseph, launched DontDateHimGirl.com two years ago. The site allows anonymous users to post information and photos of men, often accusing them of infidelity and bad behavior. Cunningham told the Post-Gazette that she would not answer questions about herself or the lawsuit, but gave the paper a written statement:   read more »

Tomorrow we officially launch our Legal Threats Database, a catalog of the growing number of lawsuits, cease-and-desist letters, and other legal challenges faced by those engaging in online speech. As many of our readers are no doubt aware, the individual threat entries have been available for some time, but starting tomorrow users will be able to view the entire database and search the entries using a number of fields, including location, legal claim, publication medium, and content type.

The database already contains a fascinating array of lawsuits, as well as more informal threats like cease-and-desist letters and emails. Its several-hundred entries are growing daily. One of the most exciting aspects of the database is the ability it gives our users to input new threat entries, whether based on their own experiences or their knowledge of legal threats faced by friends or colleagues. One of our users, blogger Tabatha Marshall of Washington State, created a new threat entry this weekend. We followed up with her, obtained additional information, and edited the entry for publication. In this post, I'll excerpt for you the "Description" portion of the resulting database entry, Internet Solutions v. Marshall:

On November 1, 2007, Internet Solutions, a company that runs a number of employment recruiting and Internet advertising businesses, including VeriResume, sued blogger Tabatha Marshall in federal court in Florida.   read more »

I blogged about Orthomom's victory on Friday. Here's another big win for a blogger recently. Last Monday, the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina granted summary judgment to Philip Smith in the lawsuit brought against him by BidZirk, LLC, Daniel Schmidt, and Jill Patterson. The decision contains a handful of rulings that could be helpful to bloggers faced with lawsuits in the future. Most significantly, the court held that Smith's blogging activity fit the "news reporting and news commentary" statutory defense to trademark dilution liability under 15 U.S.C. § 1125(c)(4)(C).

In January 2006, Smith published a four-part article, entitled "Special Report: You Gotta Be Berserk To Use An eBay Listing Company! The Whole Story." In the post, Smith depicted his negative experience with BidZirk and his interactions with the company's president, Daniel Schmidt. In the course of this discussion, Smith reproduced BidZirk's logo and made snarky comments about it. He also discussed more generally the positive and negative aspects of using an eBay listing company, such as BidZirk, and provided a checklist for readers to consult in deciding whether to do so. Additionally, he linked to an article on another website that discussed Schmidt and Patterson's upcoming wedding and contained a photograph of them.   read more »