IP: Unlimited reach? The long arm of libel law

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Jo Procter <Jo.Procter () williams edu>
Date: Fri, 28 Jun 2002 09:55:00 -0400
To: farber () central cis upenn edu
Subject: Unlimited reach? The long arm of libel law

IPers may be interested in this from the Online News Association, which I
received and pass along with their permission.


> Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2002 20:30:26 -0400 (EDT)
> From: jcastro () northwestern edu
> Subject: Unlimited reach? The long arm of libel law [ONA JUNE UPDATE]
> To: Jo Procter <Jo.Procter () williams edu>
> MIME-version: 1.0
> Status:
>
> Dear Jo Procter,
>
> When I was a newspaper reporter, I covered a lot of beats. But the courts
> never
> attracted me. They do now, though -- in part as a working journalist but
> mainly
> as the president of the ONA. That's because the association has filed
> briefs in
> two important "e-jurisdiction" cases involving the geographic location in
> which
> a news organization can be sued.
>
> In both cases, individuals sued newspapers for libel but not in the
> jurisdiction
> where the stories were published and primarily circulated. Instead, the
> lawsuits
> were filed where the individuals lived: one in Big Stone Gap, Va., the
> other in
> Australia. In both cases, local courts ruled the suits could proceed
> because the
> stories were also posted and read online, thus giving the courts grounds for
> hearing the cases.
>
> "Advocates of free speech and news-media lawyers worry that if the district-
> court decision stands [in the Stanley Young vs. Hartford Courant case],
> online
> publishers could be sued for defamation in any state or county that an online
> article is read," The New York Times reported in a May 27, 2002, article. The
> article quoted Robert M. OíNeil, director of the Thomas Jefferson Center
> for the
> Protection of Free Expression, as saying:  "The danger is that a doctrine of
> this sort could cause publications large, small, or medium to decline to
> put on
> their Web pages material that might offend a person in a remote jurisdiction."
>
> The online journalists who founded the ONA werenít prescient about these
> cases
> when they made freedom of expression part of our mission. But as journalists,
> they knew the many assaults on freedom of expression and the free flow of
> information, and they knew the Internet would pose new challenges.
>
> We recently formalized our legal-affairs committee and asked Past
> President Rich
> Jaroslovsky to serve as chairman. Serving on the committee are M.J. Bear, Max
> Cacas, Fred Mann and ONA counsel Jon Hart, who also co-authors the Legal
> Briefs
> section of this newsletter. Let them know your thoughts on what the ONA could
> pursue in this area.
>
> For more details on the Virginia case, see:
> http://www.editorandpublisher.com/editorandpublisher/headlines/article_display.
> j
> sp?vnu_content_id=1507003
>
> For more on the Australia case, see:
> http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/05/28/1022569770387.html
>                            * * * * *



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