Bizarre, Society, Torts

Woman Sues Website Over Posting Accusing Her of Being Ugly and Herpes Carrier

thumb_computer_assault_2There is a new case involving a website being sued for a vicious posting. A 27-year-old woman in La Porte, Texas is suing thedirty.com site for a posting that she was humiliated her over the posting that called fat, sexually promiscuous, cocaine using herpes carrier. She is suing Dirty World Entertainment and Hooman Karamian, the founder of the site who uses the alias “Nik Richie” online.

The posting with a picture included a question to the site’s founder “Nik Richie” who works out of Scottsdale, Arizona. The poster asked if Richie would sleep with her and he responded: “No, I don’t want to get infected.” She says that the site refused to take down the posting until it received a threatening letter from her lawyer.

The case will turn on whether the site is protected under the Communications Decency Act, which has been used repeatedly by Web providers to bar liability. These cases highlight the protection given to Internet companies like Craigslist and Facebook from defamation lawsuits. Under a federal law and the ruling in Zeran. The Communications Decency Act. Section 230 of the 1996 Act gives protections to online service providers from being sued for the actions of others. That section states: “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”

Kenneth Zeran sued America Online for negligence. On April 25, 1995, an unidentified person posted a message on an AOL bulletin board advertising “Naughty Oklahoma T-shirts.” It was a prank that featured offensive products about the Oklahoma bombing and told interested buyers to call “Ken” at Zeran’s home phone number in Seattle. Zeran notified AOL in a series of telephone calls and letters about the bogus posting. But AOL allegedly refused to take down the material. Then the prankster put more messages on the site from Ken, not only producing more calls but leading an announcer for the Oklahoma radio station KRXO to read the messages and encouraged listeners to call Zeran.

The Fourth Circuit held that Section 320 blocked any liability, even if AOL was informed of the falsity and harmfulness of the information. It was a very harsh decision and it is not clear that the federal law was truly intended to protect these companies for any liability under any circumstance for false and harmful postings.

For the full story, click here.

109 thoughts on “Woman Sues Website Over Posting Accusing Her of Being Ugly and Herpes Carrier”

  2. This is spam. Since it is in Russian, you can pretty well bet that it is the Russian mob trying to “sell” some non-existent product. Use Google Translate and you can see.

  3. What are these foreign language posts all about? I see them occasionally on various old threads.

    Hey, taniyahhat, use the translation keys on your computer so that we all know what you have to say.

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  15. It would seem to me, that Nik Richie is playing with fire on his site.
    You will note, that many times he personally comments. That might take this site out of Sect 230.

    It also seems to me, that this guy might not really appreciate many times who he is playing with.

    After a request is made for deletion and same is refused, it would seem to me, that what would stop some unknow person from walking up to Mr. Richie or whomever and beating his brains in?

    Now why would Mr. Richie want to take a chance like that?

  16. I first concur with AnonymouslyYours, truth is a complete defense to a defamation suit.
    So the question at court would be, Is she fat?, does she have an STD, and is she sexually promiscuous.
    If her defamation suit is based on those imputations, and the defandant can prove them to be true, then the plaintiff loses.

    Also, as to website’s immunity, I would say the law gives a presumptive protection from non-intentional or knowing publishing of the tortious material, but after it being brought to their attention, and a request for it to be removed, and they affirmatively refuse, I would say they have lost the presumption of being a passive or ancilliary publisher, but have then taken a part in the tort.

  17. That notion in Zeran* that distributors are a subset of publishers so as to invoke federal pre-emption and hence the immunity protections of the CDA against state tort defamation claims always perturbs me. No Court is more conservative than the 4th Circuit and they clearly “made” law here in contravention of the conservative mantra of strict adherence to the plain wording of the statute. Not saying they were wrong just philosophically hypocritical or as we like to say, “keeping two sets of books.

    *Zeran v. America Online, Inc., 129 F.3d 327 (4th Cir. 1997)

  18. Don’t no one slap me down, but could truth not be a defense? If it is not and then it would fall under the defamation laws,then all sort of privacy laws would be available.

  20. She was not a public figure. Doesn’t she have the right to privacy based on her status?

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