Best of TOC 2012

Legally Speaking, Think Before You Tweet

By Jenn Webb

The relationship between libel laws and new media has moved into the legal spotlight with a settlement in the Courtney Love Twitter defamation case and a suit against blogger John Hoff.

These examples, and others, put a new focus on libel. Many people are already familiar with libel cases against magazines and newspapers, but what about content published on Twitter or Facebook, or on personal blogs? And since so many of us are publishers now — whether we define ourselves that way or not — what do individuals need to know about libel?

David Ardia, fellow at the Berkman Center and the director of the Citizen Media Law Project, recently walked me through a couple of examples of how libel laws are slowly adapting to new media platforms. He also offered some common sense best practices for avoiding libel litigation.

Our interview follows.

How has libel law been affected by social networking platforms?

David Ardia: Libel law, which has been judge-made law for a very long time, has a history of slowly adapting to technological change. I would be reluctant to say that these new social communication technologies have radically changed the law, because they haven’t. But I do think we’re going to begin to see their influence play out over time.

One thing that has been very significant is that the means of publishing information, and the ability ...