{"id":375260,"date":"2010-03-01T09:22:30","date_gmt":"2010-03-01T14:22:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techdirt.com\/articles\/20100226\/1638518325.shtml"},"modified":"2010-03-01T09:22:30","modified_gmt":"2010-03-01T14:22:30","slug":"forwarding-a-defamatory-email-is-not-defamation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/375260","title":{"rendered":"Forwarding A Defamatory Email Is Not Defamation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We&#8217;ve seen some folks <a http:\/\/www.techdirt.com\/article.php?sid=20091117\/1150136969#c137\">claim<\/a> in the comments that Section 230 safe harbors go away if the person or company is involved in forwarding or posting the material of others &#8212; but courts have repeatedly <a href=\"http:\/\/www.citmedialaw.org\/threats\/batzel-v-smith\" >held otherwise<\/a>.  Now we&#8217;ve got yet another such case, that actually has pretty a pretty similar story line to some previous lawsuits.  Basically a guy forwarded an email to a mailing list, which someone claimed was defamatory &#8212; and they sued the guy who forwarded the email.  But, once again, <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.ericgoldman.org\/archives\/2010\/02\/forwarding_defa.htm\" >a court has found that the mere act of forwarding the email<\/a> does not take away section 230 protections.  The fact that the guy added a brief intro to the email also didn&#8217;t change this &#8212;  though, the content of that intro could be reviewed for defamation (the court found there was none), since that was actually written by the guy.<\/p>\n<p>Once again, this is exactly how Section 230 should act.  It&#8217;s designed to make sure liability gets applied to the right party &#8212; the one actually making (for example) the defamatory remarks.  Merely passing along what someone said shouldn&#8217;t have the liability passed on to you as well, and that&#8217;s exactly what the court found.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/techdirt.com\/articles\/20100226\/1638518325.shtml\">Permalink<\/a> | <a href=\"http:\/\/techdirt.com\/articles\/20100226\/1638518325.shtml#comments\">Comments<\/a> | <a href=\"http:\/\/techdirt.com\/article.php?sid=20100226\/1638518325&#038;op=sharethis\">Email This Story<\/a><br \/>\n <br clear=\"both\" style=\"clear: both;\"\/><br \/>\n<br clear=\"both\" style=\"clear: both;\"\/><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/ads.pheedo.com\/click.phdo?s=8eca55a9bd2aabb45130b4953279251e&#038;p=1\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" style=\"border: 0;\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/ads.pheedo.com\/img.phdo?s=8eca55a9bd2aabb45130b4953279251e&#038;p=1\"\/><\/a><br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" height=\"0\" width=\"0\" border=\"0\" style=\"display:none\" src=\"http:\/\/a.rfihub.com\/eus.gif?eui=2225\"\/><\/p>\n<div class=\"feedflare\">\n<a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.techdirt.com\/~ff\/techdirt\/feed?a=FWqRyUvZ6J0:CvpOaqxLEKU:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/techdirt\/feed?i=FWqRyUvZ6J0:CvpOaqxLEKU:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.techdirt.com\/~ff\/techdirt\/feed?a=FWqRyUvZ6J0:CvpOaqxLEKU:c-S6u7MTCTE\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/techdirt\/feed?d=c-S6u7MTCTE\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/techdirt\/feed\/~4\/FWqRyUvZ6J0\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We&#8217;ve seen some folks<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-375260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=375260"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375260\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=375260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=375260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=375260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}