Libel Law Still Not Settled For Bloggers

from the important-issues dept

In the last year, we've received five or six legal threats at Techdirt. In every case, it concerned a comment on the site not written by anyone here, which should protect us from any real lawsuit. In most cases, the threatening party went away pretty quickly when the law was explained to them, but some people always feel that they need to sue. While the legal protections are mostly clear, some parts of internet libel law are still unsettled. It may depend on where you are, and whether or not you get a judge who actually understands the internet. Part of the problem is that most of the laws written for print publications have not been extended to the internet where applicable. The other problem is that not every judge has interpreted some of the laws in the same way. Either way, it seems likely that there are going to be many more lawsuits before this issue gets settled.

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