E-Media Tidbits

Humantics Foundation Ilena Rosenthal, defendant in a net libel case currently before the Calif. Supreme Court.

Does a current high-profile net libel case deserve such gravitas? I wonder...

The Sept. 6 AP story on Barrett v. Rosenthal, mentioned Sept. 8 in E-Media Tidbits, omitted the back story. Now that I've read up on the case, it's hard to understand how this particular case attracted such major backing.

The current case before the Calif. Supreme Court (Barrett v. Rosenthal, S122953) is based on a 2004 California appellate court decision which allowed the case brought by Canadian doctor Terry Polevoy and U.S. doctor Stephen Barrett. According to AP, justices from the Calif. Supreme Court appear to lean toward dismissing this case.

Here's the unlikely cast of characters:

• Drs. Stephen Barrett and Terry Polevoy: The plaintiffs operate similar sites debunking questionable medical claims: Barrett's Quackwatch and Polevoy's Healthwatcher.
• Tim Bolen: The original source of the defamatory statements is the publicist for Dr. Hulda Clark, who claims to be able to cure cancer, AIDS, and many other illnesses via an electrical device. The Federal Trade Commission found that Clark's claims violated the FTC Act. Bolen publicly accused Polevoy of "stalking" Canadian WIC Radio Network personality Christine McPhee and other bizarre behavior.
• Ilena Rosenthal: The defendant in this case is the director of the Humantics Foundation which describes itself as "the largest breast implant support group in the world." There appears to be little evidence to support this claim.

More background: In a prior ruling Barrett, Polevoy and their attorney were ordered to pay Rosenthal's attorney fees because they failed to prove that they suffered financial losses due to Rosenthal's re-posting of Bolen's false claims about Polevoy.

What happened: Apparently, Rosenthal did take information from a known quack's publicist (Bolen) and republished it without investigating his claims. Bolen's statements called into question the character of Terry Polevoy, and suggested that women contact various law enforcement agencies about Polevoy.

Rosenthal took it even further by continuing to post inflammatory statements about Barrett and Polevoy. Those statements, while inflammatory, inaccurate and in some cases downright childish, seem to indicate a profound level of incivility -- a war of snark to the nth degree. But does that really add up to libel?

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, one of several major organizations that filed an amicus brief on Rosenthal's behalf, asserted that if Rosenthal was considered responsible for the statements simply because she republished them, "this would indeed have a chilling effect on free speech on the Internet."

Yet I am not sure that this tawdry suit is the right vehicle on which to send this important issue to the Courts or to Congress, as Tom Mallory suggested yesterday.

Have we come to a point where we need laws to compel us to think before we snark? Shouldn't we first do more to encourage online publishers to investigate claims in unsolicited e-mails, rather than petitioning for government regulation?