Remember the libel suit involving the girl complaining about her moldy apartment on her twitter account? Well in case any of you were wondering, the case has been dismissed. The apartment management sued the defendant Amanda Bonnon for libel, claiming she published false and defamatory information on her twitter account. The judge in the case dismissed it on the grounds that “the tweet was too vague to meet the legal standards of libel.” Her tweet did not specify which city the apartment complex was in. Horizon Realty could be located anywhere, and since Twitter is a worldwide network, people reading her post would not necessarily associate it with the Chicago, IL Horizon Realty company. Had Amanda been more specific however, Horizon Realty may have won their case. This is something that we all should be thinking about these days, especially those who are active in social media, like myself. People love to use twitter to complain – I actually work for a corporation as their social media intern, and I deal with twitterer’s complaints every day. Everyone has a right to complain about something – it’s free speech – but we need to be aware of the way in which we are phrasing our online complaints because someone may go after us on the grounds of libel, and that would not be good.
I found an article on CNN referencing Amanda’s case and Courtney Love’s twitter libel suit. It discusses libel and social media, and how the law sometimes has trouble catching up with the ever-growing world of technology. The article states that one of the reasons why it is so difficult to handle internet cases is because of the fundamental question: “Is the Web a unique, separate space or is it really an extension of real space?” These two cases are probably only the start to many more to come and hopefully help set some precedent to help guide us in social media law. Check out the article here, it poses a lot of interesting ideas surrounding this current debate:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/11/17/law.technology/index.html
What do you guys think?
1 comment:
I completely agree that the law has had much trouble keeping up with technology, it seems like the lines stay blurred no matter how you look at it. I also agree with that case being dismissed. That girl may have complained however it didn't mention the specific apartment buidling leaving the door open for dismissal. Bravo.
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