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Just Engaging in Speech Here

November 14, 2003 By

An interesting bit of news from Wired: It’s been ruled, in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, that bloggers can’t be sued for libel as a result of republishing information. I found the logic intriguing:

“One-way news publications have editors and fact-checkers, and they’re not just selling information — they’re selling reliability,” said Cindy Cohn, legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “But on blogs or e-mail lists, people aren’t necessarily selling anything, they’re just engaging in speech. That freedom of speech wouldn’t exist if you were held liable for every piece of information you cut, paste and forward.”

11/14/03 8:23 AM | filed under: main |

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