What responsibilities do web sites have to ensure what their visitors post is accurate? That’s the issue at the heart of a new lawsuit targeted at DontDateHimGirl.com, a website that allows scorned women to post pictures and comments about men who cheat.
Pittsburgh lawyer Todd Hollis filed a complaint on Thursday after anonymous postings on the site accused him of dating multiple women at once and spreading a sexually transmitted disease. When he asked website owner, Tasha Joseph, to remove the posts, she refused.
With 600,000 registered users and over 1 million hits per day, the site is quite popular with women looking to vent, share experiences or find support. However, many of the comments posted are downright nasty, so it’s not surprising that someone is challenging it in court.
Lida Rodriguez, attorney for Joseph, defended the site:
‘Just because you own a coffee shop doesn’t mean you are responsible for what people say while they’re there. You could no more sue the owner of a coffee shop for the defamation that took place there than you would sue DontDateHimGirl.com,’ Rodriguez said.
John Orie, Hollis’ lawyer, doesn’t buy that argument. His client seeks damages in excess of $25,000, an amount he said should get Joseph to clean up the website and start verifying the information being posted.
‘If there are three Arab terrorist sitting in a coffee shop plotting to blow something up, don’t you think the coffee shop owner has a responsibility to do something?’ Orie said.
Now, personally, I don’t see how Arab terrorists compromising national security is relevant as a defense, but I can definitely see why Hollis is angry if the women are making stuff up about him. Once allegations are made, it’s difficult to prove that you are innocent. Lance Armstrong will always be dogged by rumors that he may have doped up, though he repeatedly and consistently denies it. The mere suggestion that it may have happened has cast a cloud of doubt around him.
That said, anytime you act inappropriately in public, someone can call you on it. You never know when someone might retell and embellish the story to their friends and family. The internet just makes this type of social venting more accessible to larger audiences.
This is something companies have learned with sites catering to customer feedback like PlanetFeedback.com, Complaints.com , or even Google’s directory of Allegedly Unethical Firms. If companies provide bad customer service, their customers will voice their frustrations loudly – to whoever will listen. It’s not surprising that websites that do something similar, only on a personal rather than corporate level, are growing in popularity.
That said, it’s just as easy to spread false accusations about innocent people as it is to recount a true story, so how can site owners verify that what their readers post is accurate? The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has recently posted legal guidelines for bloggers outlining what defamation is and what needs to be proved in court to establish defamation. Technically, opinions aren’t considered defamatory, but then what constitutes an “opinion” is also open to interpretation. Of course, the individual posters aren’t being sued here – the website is.
Website owners who host information provided by third parties can turn to the Communication Decency Act of 1996, which states
Section 230 says that “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 federal law preempts any state laws to the contrary: “[n]o cause of action may be brought and no liability may be imposed under any State or local law that is inconsistent with this section.” The courts have repeatedly rejected attempts to limit the reach of Section 230 to “traditional” Internet service providers, instead treating many diverse entities as “interactive computer service providers.”
Regardless, with so many gray areas open to interpretation, it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
[...] that makes one more lawsuit challenging the [...]