Chris Read, a 42-year-old from Kent, is facing legal action for libel after leaving negative feedback for an item he bought on auction site eBay. On October 3, Read used the feedback facility on eBay and wrote: “Item was scratched, chipped and not the model advertised on Mr Jones’s eBay account.” Mr Read subsequently received an e-mail from Mr Jones, a 26-year-old businessman from Suffolk who deals in second-hand electrical goods, saying that his comments were damaging his business, and threatening him with legal action unless he deleted them from the site (Source: Times online).
This case is interesting because it demonstrates how personal libel can get when it takes place on the Internet. If the seller wanted to get rid of the comment posted by Mr Read on eBay, the quickest way to achieve this would have been through a legal threat to eBay, not the buyer.
Companies like eBay would most commonly be advised by their lawyers to remove comments that bear a legal threat, to avoid becoming responsible for the content themselves.
As soon as a libel is reported to eBay, all the legal protections that it might have had by claiming it was only a third party to the dispute are no longer certain. Once it is notified, it is most likely responsible. This principle is often referred to by moderation professionals as “notice and takedown”.
But when individuals, not companies, are involved, insult is personal, and they often don’t have the benefit of a legal team and a cool assessment of the best way to achieve their objective (in this case the removal of a comment).
Lawyers are trained to separate emotion from fact and process. Private citizens aren’t. This case is no doubt one of many to come. It would be interesting to see how the legal system adapts.
UPDATE:
As this blog is of a UK slant, it is always interesting to hear how things are across the pond, where libel laws are less onerous, and freedom of expression has more of a legal stance. I got the following comment from Michael Roberts, a reputation analyst at Rexxfield:
“I liked your article. The poster of the information is certainly liable for damages. However, I think you will find that eBay as a third party republisher of the libel enjoys federal immunity (at least in the USA) from civil litigation; furthermore they do not need to remove the offensive material, even if served with positive proof. (section 230(C) of the information communications decency act). (Although I am sure eBay would, they just don’t have to)
Frankly I think it is an absurd loophole allowing web services to turn a blind eye to the plight of innocent victims of malicious speech. I recently published a few essays on this issue:
http://www.rexxfield.com/freedom_speech.html
Be sure to follow the links to the “google” blind eye responses to “take down” notices.”
ThatDanny comment: As Michael rightly points out, the treatment of libel is different under US law to English (and Scottish) law. The protections that stringent libel laws provide are a double-edged sword, but in this case they make it simpler for individuals to achieve content removal in the UK than in the US.
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