Defamation law and the internet
Tuesday, 18 March 2008
Last Updated: Tuesday, 18 March 2008
By Lucinda Schmidt
If you or your business are slandered online (or if your website, even inadvertently, puts up something libellous) what are your legal options?
When Melbourne real estate agents Paul Castran and Mark Forytarz were upset by allegations published on a consumer advocate website, they didn’t even bother suing the website owner.
Last December, they lodged a defamation writ in the Victorian Supreme Court against Google, in what some legal experts have described as a worldwide test case of the reach of defamation laws.
The case, which is still in its early stages, highlights two of the biggest risks the internet poses for business owners. First, if someone doesn’t like you or your company, they can tell the world – in a website article, on MySpace, through a blog, in a chat room. And anytime someone Googles your name, up pop the comments. Forever.
Second, if you have your own company website, you need to be careful not to defame anyone. Not just in the online content that you prepare, but also in user-generated content like blogs and feedback sections. You’re the publisher, and you are responsible for what’s on your website.
“If you are hosting a website, you have to treat it the same way as if you’re publishing a newspaper,” says Nicholas Pullen, a partner at TressCox lawyers and author of Digital Defamation. “You have to monitor it. It’s not a good excuse to say ‘whoops, I didn’t notice’.”
Pullen says that if you allow others to post things on your website, it’s prudent to have a delay before it goes up, so you can check it – some big companies have staff dedicated to monitoring this. For most smaller companies the budget won’t stretch that far, but Pullen still urges some form of real-time monitoring.
If something gets through, and you are hit with a letter of demand, the safest thing is to take down the material, according to Matt Collins, a Melbourne barrister and author of The Law of Defamation on the Internet.
“I always advise clients; when in doubt, take it down,” he says. Even though Australia’s uniform defamation laws, introduced in 2006, have liberalised free speech by making truth or an honestly held opinion a complete defence, he says the only way to avoid being sued – or at least minimise the risk – is to remove the comments.
But what if the boot’s on the other foot, and someone has defamed you or your company?