Yahoo Removing Your Stock Board Comments Is Not A Violation Of Your First Amendment Rights
from the freedom-to-post? dept
Eric Goldman points us to the latest silly lawsuit against Yahoo. This time, it's a guy who posted a bunch of comments on various stock forums, and when Yahoo appears to have canceled his account, he sued the company for violating his First Amendment rights. You can read the full lawsuit below:
Of course, the First Amendment has nothing to do with this whatsoever. It is entirely focused on what Congress can do, not what some company can do. Congress can't make a law preventing this guy from sharing his thoughts -- but Yahoo has every right to remove his comments. The guy's other complaints are that in removing his posts, Yahoo is "aiding and abetting" stock pumpers, but he provides little evidence to back that up (and, again, simply removing his posts hardly seems like aiding and abetting.) Oh, right, and then there's the claim that this somehow violates the guy's civil rights. At some point people might realize that companies have no obligation to let you say whatever you want...






Reader Comments (rss)
(Flattened / Threaded)
Huh?
[ reply to this | link to this | view in chronology ]
duh?
[ reply to this | link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: duh?
[ reply to this | link to this | view in chronology ]
If the courts think this person is wasting their time they can say so .... what exactly is your point ?!!
[ reply to this | link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ reply to this | link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ reply to this | link to this | view in chronology ]
Will he win, that depends
[ reply to this | link to this | view in chronology ]
"I'm American. I respect the Bill of Rights. Freedom of Speech is one of the greatest parts of being American. That being said, you have no rights in here, whatsoever."
Private companies can do what they want with their property. Yahoo can take down any comments they want and block whoever they want for basically whatever reason they want. They won't win awards for overusing the power, and using it too much will probably get some negative publicity, but it's their right. Same as the way newspapers aren't legally obligated to publish letters you send in to them; it's not a violation of your rights, it's an enforcement of theirs.
[ reply to this | link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
unrelated tangent: if it's a spoken untruth it's slander; if it's a written untruth, it's NOT slander, it's libel.
[ reply to this | link to this | view in chronology ]
Free speech is vs the government, not vs. private property
Accusing someone of a crime or unethical act with no evidence to back it up is indeed a good reason for an admin to ban your account, and it appears that's what happened here.
[ reply to this | link to this | view in chronology ]
[ reply to this | link to this | view in chronology ]
Add Your Comment