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Torts – defamation – republication

By: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF//August 22, 2013//

Torts – defamation – republication

By: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF//August 22, 2013//

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United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit

Civil

Torts – defamation – republication — Internet

The passive maintenance of a website is not republication of defamatory material.

“The theme of these decisions is that excluding the Internet from the single-publication rule would eviscerate the statute of limitations and expose online publishers to potentially limitless liability. This same concern previously led courts to apply the single-publication rule to books. They did so despite the fact that book publishers have greater post-publication control over the circulation of their content than do newspaper publishers. See Gregoire v. G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 298 N.Y. 119, 124–26 (1948); Kilian v. Stackpole Sons, Inc., 98 F.Supp. 500, 503–04 (M.D. Pa. 1951). All copies of a single newspaper edition are made available to the public on one day; in contrast, book publishers hold stock in reserve and release batches to the public over months or years. In Pippen’s view, the single-publication rule ought not have been extended to book publishers because they could pulp the books they kept in stock, while newspaper publishers had no leftover stock to destroy. But no court saw it that way, and no court has been persuaded that the even greater control that Internet publishers have over their content—and the much lower cost of editing or deleting that content—is a reason to exclude them from the Act’s coverage. Indeed, courts have drawn the opposite conclusion: the Internet’s greater reach comes with an ‘even greater potential for endless retriggering of the statute of limitations, multiplicity of suits and harassment of defendants.’ Firth, 98 N.Y. 2d at 370; see also, e.g., Churchill, 378 N.J. Super. at 480–81. All the more reason that the single-publication rule should apply.”

Affirmed.

12-3294 Pippen v. NBC Universal Media, LLC

 

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Coleman, J., Easterbrook, J.

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