Blogger Isn’t Liable for Anonymous Comments–Griffith v. Wall
29 12 2017[It’s impossible to blog about Section 230 without reminding you that Congress is on the cusp of gutting it.]
Griffith blogs at the Lumberton Informer. He has criticized Wall, Lumberton’s municipal clerk. The blog allows anonymous comments, and Wall claimed that Griffith wrote those too. Wall sued Griffith for defamation, but Griffith won at trial. In a post-trial opinion, the judge explained that Wall was a public figure, so any defamation claim needed to show actual malice, and no malice was shown. The opinion also said that most of Griffith’s statements were opinions, not assertions of facts. Regarding the anonymous comments, the opinion indicated “there was insufficient proof in the record to find that Griffith had control over the posting of anonymous comments in his blog—and thus was not responsible for their content.”
In Wall’s appeal, she claimed that Griffith violated 47 USC 230(c)(2), the provision that says websites aren’t liable for their filtering decisions. What??? Wall claimed 230(c)(2) “placed an obligation on Griffith to remove offending material published—by anonymous posters—on his blog.” The appellate court disagrees:
Case citation: Griffith v. Wall, 2017 WL 3713534 (Miss. Ct. App. Aug. 29, 2017)
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