Page 349 - Law and the Media

Law and the Media
21.4 New media

The United States is at the forefront of the development of law and legislation in relation to
new media.

21.4.1 Online defamation

Unlike the liability imposed upon newspapers and broadcasters, providers of ‘interactive
computer services’ are not liable for publishing or for failing to edit, withhold or restrict
access to defamatory material written by others. The situation is different in England. Section
230(c) of the Communications Decency Act 1996 provides:

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.

‘Information content provider’ is defined in Section 230(e)(3) as:

. . . any person or entity that is responsible, in whole or in part, for the creation or
development of information provided through the Internet or any other interactive
computer service.

The legislation was enacted by Congress in recognition of the difficulties faced in regulating
content on the Internet because of the speed with which information can be communicated
and to overrule the case of Stratton Oakmont Inc v Prodigy Services Co (1995) in which
Prodigy, an Internet service provider, was found liable for defamation. It was also enacted in
an effort to avoid the development of self-regulation of content on the Internet as part of an
government policy to encourage Internet service providers to develop blocking and filtering
technologies to allow parents to control access by children to inappropriate material
online.

The effect of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act 1996 was felt in the case of
Blumenthal v Drudge (1998). Sidney Blumenthal was an assistant to President Bill Clinton.
He brought a defamation action in the District Court of Columbia against Matt Drudge, the
author of an online gossip column called ‘The Drudge Report’, in which Drudge alleged that
Blumenthal had assaulted his wife and that the assault been ‘covered up’. Blumenthal also
brought an action against AOL because it made ‘The Drudge Report’ available to its
subscribers. Although the court was of the view that AOL had editorial control over the
article and should have exercised such editorial control, it was bound by the provisions of
Section 230 and held that AOL was immune from suit.

Although Internet service providers cannot be sued for defamation, they can be ordered to
divulge the identities of anonymous individuals who post defamatory statements on sites
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