Virginia Court Throws Out Internet Libel Suit
from the that-old-internet-jurisdiction-question-again dept
Just days after the Australian Supreme Court decided that publishing on the internet meant you were open to facing charges anywhere, a Virginia court is taking the other opinion. They’ve thrown out a case where a prison warden claims his reputation was hurt in Virginia when a Connecticut newspaper wrote an article criticle of him, and placed it on their website. The court said that the material was clearly not aimed at a Virginia audience, and thus Virginia was not the proper place for the lawsuit. I imagine this will settle nothing, and eventually a case like this one (or perhaps this one, itself) will have to make it to the Supreme Court. Of course, it will still be useless if other countries don’t all agree on how to handle jurisdiction on internet posts.
