Internet Defamation Law and Web Critics
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by: AaronKlunizka
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Almost every single and every internet business gigantic and small are going to get at least a few critics after a handful of years of operation, who will probably publish their commentary for the planet to discover in an effort to disparage the organization they do not really like. Oftentimes the critics have got legit criticisms, and other occasions the comments may possibly be libelous, having been posted by aggravated clients or competitors who want to harm the business by lying.
Whatever the case may be, on the web criticism of a business signifies a problem for entrepreneurs. Depending on the circumstance, there are a number of actions which in turn can be used to fight back against criticism against an organization.
Defamation Lawsuits
If perhaps the actual responses are generally bogus and detrimental, the case for defamation can become made. This is commonly a long process unless the identity of the commenter is known, because it involves a prolonged discovery method when trying to identify the defendant from their web based username.
If a defamation case is successful, it can result in an award of economic damages for the plaintiff, as well as an injunction against the defendant requiring them to remove the defamatory content that they have published.
Trademark/Copyright Lawsuits
In certain cases, criticism can be dealt with via the mechanisms provided by the copyright statutes. they may infringe on your trademark rights by using a domain name that incorporates your brand name.
Brand name use is not always useful. For example, PayPalSucks.com, a website which posts complaints about PayPal's services, is legal because there is no chance that it would be confusingly similar to anything PayPal owns, since the name clearly indicates a disparagement of their product.
However, if someone registered, "PayPalPaymentSolutions.com" in order to entice people to arrive at a site which disparages the product, a case could be made that the domain name's use of the PayPal trademark could confuse patrons and infringe on PayPal's intellectual property rights.
Likewise, a critical website may post an excessive amount of intellectual property that your business owns that goes beyond the fair use exemption. You may consider engaging in copyright litigation against them, or sending DMCA takedown notices to their host to get the content taken out.
Coping with Legal Criticism
Sometimes, the criticism someone makes of a business may not rise to the level of defamation, or it may be defamatory but the business owner simply wishes to avoid a legal confrontation. In such a case, there are other tactics which can be used. Often, forums, on line newspapers, and other websites which accept user submissions will have a Code of Conduct for their users which requires a higher standard to be met than simply not defaming someone. In cases like that, a letter may solve the problem. Sometimes, this may achieve good results, with the user's criticism being removed and not requiring litigation.
Another solution is to hire a reputation management company to protect your business name. Criticism can put a major damper on your business. . Reputation management companies can work to take the step mentioned above about reporting the user, but they can also optimize certain keywords so that pages favorable to your business crowd out the bad content on the first pages of search engine results.
ICANN even has a policy in place for dealing with domain name infringment.
Things to Consider
Not every strategy is the best approach for coping with disparaging comments about your business. A few things should be taken into consideration when deciding what the best approach is to take:
. Cost.It can be expensive to engage in litigation, so think twice before jumping in head first and weigh the pros and cons of each. You should consider the cost versus the benefits (is there a good chance of winning, if you do win will it stop a major source of criticism, will you be able to collect if you win or is the defendant indigent , etc). If the cost is too high, you may want to consider cheaper alternatives like reputation management or sending a letter to the website which hosts the material if it violates their Terms of Service.
. Will you create further problems for yourself? If you commence litigation against a web-savvy person, you might just turn what was a relatively minor complaint into a cause c?l?bre of Internet dwellers. A publicity campaign may be waged against you by web users who are offended by your litigiousness and end up making you even worse off. A recent lack of understanding about copyright law by an editor of Cooks Source Magazine resulted in such a large Internet-based backlash that the magazine decided to shut down its operations.
. Long-term strategy. If web criticism is more than a minor event, it may be worth hiring a reputation management company to monitor criticism and take action against it on an ongoing basis.
Hopefully this has been an useful overview of how to deal with web critics, but it is just that: an overview. For a more extensive evaluation of how to deal with web critics, you should consider consulting legal counsel and/or a reputation management company. For more information about coping with web critics, you can visit the website of The Kelly Law Firm.
About the Author
Aaron M. Kelly is an Internet Lawyer in Scottsdale, AZ.
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