webs containing different types of criticism have appeared recently, and although a general cease and desist isn’t the way to go, there has been interesting cases going around (like the dontdatehimgirl.com or the Autoadmit case, where two students from Yale sued a Website)

Nevertheless, and as Australian High Court has stated, some critics can be difamatory, based on the fact that, according to High Court’s interpretation, it’s important to stablish that business capacity and reputation are different from personal reputation. Here we don’t have a general cease and desist, since their problem is just one critic, the one involving them.

Since in this post we are talking about user generated content, with public entities as the object of their criticism, I hope this kind of interpretation isn’t followed in other countries. If public organizations give their endorsement to comment about their experience with British NHS for example, they must take in consideration that there could be some hard critics going on.

Then, would we need to stablish what could be accepted, and what could be called difamatory? Not all people have the same vocabulary, and talk the same way. I think that there could be some problem involving freedom of speech and how do they express their opinions. What kind of policy do you think would be the best to moderate such a critical system as the one presented here?

Regards,

Sergio

My OII colleague Tobias Escher reports on a German decision on website operator liability for user-posted content. A professor unhappy with his reviews on Meinprof.de, such as comments calling him a “psychopath,” sued. The site had removed the commen…