Time for Tortious Liability for Harm Online: Professor
Dealing with false or malevolent online misinformation that can spur violence means taking "a meaningful precaution" that nonetheless still allows free expression, Brian Leiter, director-University of Chicago's Center for Law, Philosophy and Human Values, wrote this week in the Journal…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
If your job depends on informed compliance, you need International Trade Today. Delivered every business day and available any time online, only International Trade Today helps you stay current on the increasingly complex international trade regulatory environment.
of Free Speech Law. Regulators could be empowered to close particular sites such as Google, Facebook and YouTube temporarily during emergencies, he said. But a better approach might be reducing the number of sites that offer incitement, though that "would require a significant change to First Amendment jurisprudence in the United States, which is particularly permissive." Online sites also should be subject to tortious liability for harm that a reasonable person would see as a foreseeable consequence of speech they knew or should have known was false, he said. The Communications Decency Act's Section 230 is a large obstacle to legal remedies for harmful online misinformation, and its protections for websites should be revoked, Leiter said. "The idea that website owners get a free pass on hosting tortious wrongdoing, but not on hosting copyright violations, is prima facie bizarre."