A federal court has dismissed news anchor Toni Miles’ claim that her former employer, Raycom Media’s WLOX-TV, committed “cyber libel” by allowing readers to post unfiltered comments about her. U. S. District Court Judge Louis Guirola, Jr. in the Southern District of Mississippi ruled that the federal Communications Decency Act immunized the news station from liability for readers’ posts.
“Persons who claim that they were harmed by a website’s publication of user-generated content may sue the third-party user who generated that content, but they may not sue the interactive computer service that enabled the third-party user to publish the content online,” Guirola wrote. “Thus, an interactive computer service is entitled to immunity as long as it did not create or author the particular information at issue.”
The defamation claims stem from an article WLOX ran on its Web site in October of 2008 stating that Miles was arrested for cocaine possession. The arrest occurred at a home Miles was visiting; a grand jury reportedly voted not to indict the news anchor.
Miles alleged that the news station defamed her both by posting an article about her arrest and by hosting readers’ comments. Her court papers don’t specify which comments by users she believed were defamatory.
In dismissing the libel claim, Guirola noted that Miles did not allege that the article was false – which is necessary to prove defamation. “The article did not state that she had actually committed any crime, but correctly noted that she had been arrested and charged with possessing drugs,” he wrote. Santa Clara University law professor Eric Goldman, who first publicized the case on his blog, calls the lawsuit “a super-easy case” in light of other decisions saying that Web publishers are immune from defamation liability for users’ comments.
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