Lawsuit may ‘chill online speech’

From Twitter and Facebook to Amazon and Google, the biggest names of the Internet are blasting a federal judge's decision allowing an Arizona-based gossip website to be sued for defamation by a former Cincinnati Bengals cheerleader convicted of having sex with a teenager.

In court briefs recently filed in the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, the Internet giants warn that if upheld, the northern Kentucky judge's ruling to let the former cheerleader's lawsuit proceed has the potential to "significantly chill online speech" and undermine a law passed by Congress in 1996 that provides broad immunity to websites. "If websites are subject to liability for failing to remove third-party content whenever someone objects, they will be subject to the `heckler's veto,' giving anyone who complains unfettered power to censor speech," according to briefs filed Nov. 19 by lawyers for Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Amazon, Gawker and BuzzFeed, among others. Those heavy hitters "really tell you how major of an issue this is," said David Gingras, attorney for Scottsdale (AZ)-based thedirty.com and its owner, Nik Richie, who lives in Orange Count (CA)