Corporate & Securities Law

Should Bloggers be Liable for Defamation in Comments?

By Hanno Kaiser

Here is an interesting and spirited debate between Cass Sunstein (for some limited liability) and Eugene Volokh (against it). In practice, I don’t think that the problem is quite as stark as Volokh makes it appear, i.e., publisher liability for comments would force blogs to disable comments or shut down altogether. It is really not all that difficult to moderate comments. Even some very high-volume blogs, such as BoingBoing, seem to do just that with minimal effort. As a general matter, I am highly skeptical of efforts to expand secondary liability of intermediaries in the commercial space, but in the context of severe damage to personal reputation of non-public figures, a notice and takedown regime does not seem to unduly burden speech.

Full post as published by Antitrust Review on July 08, 2008 (boomark / email).