AUSTIN, Texas They say nothing on the Internet ever really goes away, but the Texas Supreme Court is considering whether defamatory postings might be worth the effort to try. <\/p>\n
Justices on the state's highest civil court on Thursday weighed broader questions about cyberbullying, hate speech and the First Amendment while hearing a case with far lower stakes. At issue is whether a company can be forced to remove from its website damaging personal comments about a fired Austin businessman. <\/p>\n
Lower courts already have ruled that Robert Kinney's former company, Los Angeles-based BCG Attorney Search, can't be forced to remove the comments, even if a judge or jury eventually finds it defamed Kinney on the company's website by accusing him of running a kickback scheme. That's because defamatory speech still has protections under the law. <\/p>\n
But Kinney's attorneys told the nine-member court that it's time for Texas law to catch up with technology. <\/p>\n
\"It was a little harder to defame someone before the Internet. Now, on my cellphone, I can walk out of here and in five minutes I can say something defamatory about somebody and hit a button, and it's there worldwide,\" said Martin Siegel, Kinney's attorney. \"And it's potentially there for perpetuity.\" <\/p>\n
Anthony Ricciardelli, an attorney for BCG, said forcing the comments to be removed would \"set a dangerous precedent that will have a chilling effect on speech and may lead to a slippery slope.\" <\/p>\n
The court isn't expected to make a ruling for several months. <\/p>\n
Justices asked both sides to consider more divisive cases involving cyberbullying or hate speech whether a court should be able to issue orders to stop online antagonists from harassing others, for instance, even if no defamation was present. <\/p>\n
Siegel said it's time for Texas to join a \"modern rule\" of decisions in five other states where injunctions against defamatory speech have been granted. The Kentucky Supreme Court in 2010 ruled in a case that the future speech of a party could be restrained so long its original comments were ruled defamatory. <\/p>\n
Michael Fertik, the CEO and founder of reputation.com, said the broader problem of defamation in the digital age needs to be addressed. He said people need to be \"giving a fighting chance\" and pointed to how publishers can be forced to remove defamatory material from books before additional printings. <\/p>\n
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\nFree speech or scrub from Internet? Texas court weighs right to preserve defamatory posts<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"