But Mike gets bonus points anyway for blogging…

If we stick with the Marketplace of Ideas rationale, then Dalzell could be extending the protection of online speech to the editor, very much the “if you don’t like what I allow or disallow, get your own damn blog” thinking. I’m not sure that would apply to online newspapers, but I like it.

as I noted, the judge who dismissed the case against Tucker Max did so even though he edited and removed comments from the site, noting that even some editing of online comments did not rise to the same level of newspaper publishing. Read more about it here. It’s worth noting that the judge who dismissed the case was also the judge who wrote the initial opinion in another famous case regarding online libel (although the name escapes me at the moment).

As I wrote in an article for Keeping Free Presses Free entitled “Legal and Ethical Issues in Online Publishing”:

U.S. District Judge Stewart Dalzell found that, even though Max “selects, removes, and alters posts on the message boards,” he still acted as a “provider of an interactive computer service” and was thus not liable for the forum messages under 47 U.S.C. (a.k.a, the Communications Decency Act), section 230.

Of course, it’s easy to sue anyone for libel. Getting the case heard, or winning, is a different matter entirely.

And again, the key upon which the judge relied was the CDA (the part that wasn’t thrown out by the Supreme Court). I admit that it’s pretty weird that a publisher who does something online (moderates or removes comments) has greater protection than the same publisher doing something in print, but that’s the way the courts and congress have set it up, apparently.

(and my media law class was two years ago, btw)

Zeran v. AOL is our friend here, finding that an ISP is a distributor, not unlike the phone company – a common carrier. Say whatever you want in our public park – all we do is provide the benches.

That said, a blog or newspaper comment section that is edited closely by a human (or has stringent official guidelines) is easier to sue for libel or defamation, because once you’re making decisions about what’s okay and what’s not, someone can claim you had “knowledge of falsity or a reckless disregard of the truth,” a la New York Times v. Sullivan and the cases that followed it.

The caveat to all that, of course, is that it’s enormously difficult (in the U.S.) to prove “knowledge of falsity or a reckless disregard of the truth,” and even if you can prove it, you need to be a pretty private person in order for it to be in play in the first place.

So, private citizens can toss insults at politicians in your edited newspaper comments all they want — but watch out if you find yourself deciding which of their quiet neighbors they’re allowed to slam, and how hard.

IANAL, but I took a pretty solid Media Law class a year ago.

P.S.: There was a case in California recently that extended Zeran v. AOL-style protection to bloggers, if I’m reading it correctly, which is pretty cool.

First things first, if you’re going to edit individual comments and threads, chances are you’ll have a harder time defending your paper against libel and defamation suits regarding statements made in those comments.

Not necessarily. A few rulings – notably the dismissal of a suit against tucker max earlier this year – have seemed to indicate that even some editing of comments in an online discussion is not enough to pass libel on to the news publisher – that libel suit can only be brought against the person who made the comment. this is different from regular publishing.

Qualifier – IANAL.