'How well does traditional libel law apply to the Internet?" That was a question discussed at a continuing legal education program in New York.
Just asking the question suggests that the answer is "not well."
The answer comes easily for me, because I have, for more than 20 years, viewed defamation law as defective, even as applied to traditional media — ever since I served on the national committee that drafted the Uniform Correction and Clarification of Defamation Act. A bill to enact that proposal will be introduced in the Minnesota Legislature this winter.
The scheme of traditional defamation law is to compensate victims of libel and slander with a money award. That is an expensive and painfully slow system to administer; it is a poor substitute for a correction designed to provide a prompt restoration of the good name of the person defamed. But defamation law was superficially acceptable when defamers were usually rich media companies with the resources to actually pay the money awarded.
Now the most common defamers are individuals with few assets — users of Facebook, Twitter, and other social media, semi-amateur bloggers, and all of us who click the "send," "forward" or "reply all" buttons without giving our messages appropriate thought.
For most victims of defamation on the Internet, significant money recovery is unlikely.
The other problem with Internet defamation is that it is so rampant. Those who send words along the Internet are much less conscious of the danger of defamation — and the harm it causes — than the professional journalists of the media. And those senders do not have editors. And there are so many of them.
The perpetrators and the victims of Internet defamation number in the millions.