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August 31, 2005
Blog Comments May Cause Problems For Bloggers
Blog comments are part of the beauty of blogs. They allow different points of view to be shared, providing full analysis of various issues. However, comments can be out of line, obscene, or even worse: they can be spam!
To combat the undesirable comments, many blog owners have adopted some sort of filter in their blog comments. But, this may not be enough. The Wall Street Journal explores the issue today in Blogger Faces Lawsuit Over Comments Posted by Readers.
More than one blogger has been sued. Not for the blog post, but for the resulting comments by readers of the blog. While operators of computer message boards and mailing lists are not responsible for the content of statements posted by others, the "law of the blog" may be different. When allegedly defamatory statements are posted by others, blogs may fall within the purview of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. While this looks promising for the bloggers, there is a real possibility that they will get caught by the intellectual property aspect of the comments.
In at least one lawsuit (in Nevada), the plaintiff has claimed that the comments contained proprietary trade secrets. In this case, the Communications Decency Act is of little utility. The act has "no effect on intellectual property law," so the publication of trade secrets provided by other people may be problematic. Since the law of trade secrets varies from state to state, I can't really comment on the lawsuit in Nevada without further research. But, it seems from the complaint in the lawsuit posted on the blog that "misappropriation of trade secrets" in Nevada requires "theft, bribery, misrepresentation, breach or inducement of a breach of a duty to maintain secrecy, and/or espionage." From the little I can surmise from the blog, I don't see any overt act. Of course, I have only spent about five minutes researching the issue.
Whatever the facts are, the outcome will certainly be interesting. And, even though trade secret law is different in Nevada and Oklahoma, the precedential value will likely spill into Oklahoma. Until then, I will be watching for the arguments and the outcome of this suit.
Update 8/31/05: Stephen Nipper of the Invent Blog let us know about this link to the EFF doc on 230.
Posted by Melody Wirz at 10:20 AM.
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