(Host) A superior court judge has ruled that the owners of the i-brattleboro website are immune from a libel suit over comments posted on the site.
i-Brattleboro invites contributors to discuss community events and issues in an electronic forum its owners call "citizen journalism." The couple that owns the site were recently named as co-defendants in a suit against a blogger who allegedly posted libelous remarks about a co-worker.
Charges against the contributor who made the remarks are still pending. But i-brattleboro’s owners – collectively known as Muse Arts — have been dropped from the litigation.
Jim Maxwell, the lawyer who represents Muse Arts, says that immunity comes from a federal law passed in 1996
(Maxwell) The Comunications Decency Act of 1996 is geared toward the interactive computer service, which is defined in the statute. If someone makes a defamatory or libelous comment whether its in a newspaper or on a website or anyother way , they could be sued. That’s not what the Congress was going for. What they were saying is that ‘we’re not going to hold the messenger accountable for the message. In this particular case the messenger being the website, the pipeline, the super highway if you will.
(Host) Maxwell says the law was intended to encourage the growth of the internet.
He says the i-brattleboro ruling is consistent with other cases around the country under this law. As far as he knows, it’s the first such ruling in Vermont.