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Anonymous:
www.fornits.com


--- Quote ---11/12/07 UPDATE!
Here we go again:

Oct 10th, 2007, Our upstream hosting provider, The Planet, recieved This letter from Gabrielle C. Bozza of Broad & Cassell lawfirm in Florida essentially defaming sueschefftruth.com, careybock.com and fornits.com as "serv[ing] only to disparage and defame Ms. Scheff" and threatening litigation against The Planet if they don't delete our sites. I think it's interesting that Ms Bozza refers to her client as "it" in the final paragraph. Freudian slip? I don't know why The Planet took so long to let Sean know what was up. But we got word of it on the 12th.
But this puts our friends at lulzhost.com in the unenviable position of having to choose between staying in business and standing by their friends and ethics. Sean (Janus Zeal, the admin at lulzhost.com) pulled our shabby asses out of the fire in August when NetFirms got the demand letter (see below). He's worked hard to help us out for very little money, mostly out of solidarity and proper respect for the First Amendment. I don't know if we'll be able to continue doing business with him or not for his sake. I know he's in need of about $175 to get back reliable net access and will need to replace our business should we have to step off of his server. So please consider sending him a donation via PayPal (that donations link will go live again tomorrow, mean time, use PayPal to http://CareyBock.com/ and http://SueScheffTruth.com.

In the event that we have to move to another server again, we will need some financial help. We're considering an arrangement with a friendly hosting provider but we'd have to come up with a rack mounted server, which would cost somewhere in the range of $1500 to $2k. Ongoing server fees would run about $60/mo. But it would give us technical and legal security well beyond what we now enjoy. Mean time, we may well have to come up with legal fees and other expenses. So if you're inclined to support the fornits in that way, please feel free to    

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Antigen:
Hey man, thanks for the blog! We need bloggers. Anyone want to nominate anyone else?

Antigen:
Google internet defamation and see what comes up first on the list.

This is an important story and we have been dragged into it.

Antigen:

--- Quote from: ""Stanford Law"" ---
Court Cases

The majority of case law has shown that libel poses no problem in terms of definition and fault when it comes to a plaintiff pursuing legal action against the primary publisher of said libel; however, in the case of liability of secondary parties, correct assessment of liability has not fully been determined.

We point to three major court cases in "cyberlibel" liability as keys to understanding the current climate of the courts: Cubby v. CompuServe (1991), Stratton Oakmont v. Prodigy (1995), and Zeran v. America Online (1996). These three cases, along with several other attempts at litigation, have driven the courts' opinions on internet libel cases. Let us begin with Cubby v. CompuServe:

Cubby, Inc. vs. CompuServe Inc., 776 F.Supp. 135(S.D.N.Y. 1991)

In this very first major published case on Internet libel, the plaintiff, Cubby, Inc. claimed damages due to one of CompuServe's hundreds of independent, self operated forums. The journalistic forum called, "Rumorville" had an eletronic gossip magazine called "Skuttlebut" on which was posted a defamatory comment about Cubby, Inc. Because CompuServe does not review the contents of publications prior to postings, the court found that CompuServe held a position analagous to a distributor -- for example, an electronic bookstore or library, thereby relieving CompuServe from the liability that a publisher would face. This finding is based on the court case Smith v. California, in which the United States Supreme Court held that a distributor must have demonstrable knowledge of the erroneous (and defamatory) content of a publication prior to dissemination in order to be held liable for releasing that content. Prior landmark cases involving plaintiffs pressing libel charges against a carrier, including N.Y. Times v. Sullivan and Western Union Telegraph v. Lesesne, have found that carriers, or distributors of published works, do not hold responsiblity for libel unless they had reasonable knowledge beforehand of the libelous material they had distributed.

Stratton Oakmont vs. Prodigy (1995)

After having relieved much of the responsiblity of a network service provider in regards to liability, one might have expected a similar judgment to have been passed in the case of Stratton Oakmont v. Prodigy. Again, an instance of libelous remarks over a public on-line forum triggered a company to sue a network service provider. On a widely read financial matters forum called "Money Talk," a Prodigy user had posted about Daniel Porush, the president of Stratton Oakmont, a investement securities firm, and his employees. Porush, the poster claimed, was "soon to proven criminal," and further, Stratton Oakmont, Inc., was a "cult of brokers who either lie for a living or get fired." After reading this posting on Prodigy, Porush filed suit against the network service claiming Prodigy liable for this poster's libelous claims. Prodigy, on its legal behalf, claimed the status of a distributor (as in the case of Cubby vs. CompuServe). However, Stratton Oakmont argued that due to Prodigy's editorial control over content, Prodigy should be more correctly classified as a publisher. In essence, this is because Prodigy made clear to all users that it retained the right to edit, remove, and filter messages in its system in order to ensure a "family" atmosphere on-line. Because of these claims, the court classified Prodigy as a publisher and awarded damages to Stratton Oakmont.

Zeran vs. America Online (1996)

Finally, we come to the case of Zeran vs. America Online, in which a user was victim of a malicious hoax. The plaintiff, Kenneth Zeran, had his address and phone number posted in connection with advertisements for souvenirs (T-shirts, mugs, etc.) glorifying the Oklahoma City Bombing. An unknown AOL (America Online) user had obtain Zeran's personal information and posted these ads throughout AOL. Zeran received many disturbing threats due to this hoax, and was continually harassed via telephone and post. He sued AOL claiming negligence on AOL's behalf in allowing such notices to be posted, despite the complaints and postings he had registered with AOL upon first learning of the impersonation. Using the CDA (Communications Decency Act of 1996) as its defense, AOL claimed immunity through the protection that the CDA provides Internet providers. The courts ruled in favor of America Online, upholding that interactive computer service providers may not be held liable for posting defamatory statements posted by 3rd parties via the ISP. Effectively, this decision reversed the findings of Stratton Oakmont, Inc. vs. Prodigy.

http://www-cs-education.stanford.edu/cl ... cases.html

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Antigen:
There's a lot more here too
http://www-cs-education.stanford.edu/cl ... ndex2.html

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