Our right to state opinions online — for example , to criticize copyright trolls and their demands for money in Bob Hope of scaring them aside — are protect by the First Amendment . The Georgia Supreme Court correctly underscore these protection in a ruling late last week about the country ’s anti - stalking police . The panel overturned a run judge ’s astonishingorderdirecting a website owner to remove all assertion about a poet and motivational speaker who had a sideline business of ask thousands of dollars from anyone who posted her prose online — a pattern that had sparked plenty of criticism on the web .
The vitrine , Chan v. Ellis , was initiated by Linda Ellis , an source of the motivational poem “ The Dash , ” which is freely available on herwebsite . When others repost the poem , Ellis routinely send out right of first publication infringement notice , offering to conciliate the sound conflict for $ 7,500 . This realize Ellis notoriety on Matthew Chan’sExtortionLetterInfo.com(ELI ) a web site dedicated to providing information for recipients of settlement need letters like Ellis ’ and featuring a message board used to expose alleged copyright trolls and extortion letter schemes . The site included nearly 2,000 post about Ellis and her settlement demand , from Chan and others .
In February 2013 , Ellis filed a prayer for a “ stalking ex parte impermanent protective order , ” claiming that some of the office amounted to haunt and cyber - bullying . ( The message boards have been taken down , so we ca n’t read what the messages actually said . ) A Georgia state motor hotel keep that the on-line posts constituted “ contact ” with the author tantamount to stalking and ordered removal of all mail service about Ellis — not just jeopardise ones — in an vaulting ruling impeding freedom of expression and ignoring the legal protective covering afford to intermediary publishers of vane content ,
“ That a communicating is about a particular person does not imply necessarily that it was directed to a somebody , ” the court said . “ The publication of comment directed only to the public generally does not amount to ‘ contact ’ ” under Georgia ’s anti - stalking law of nature , it say .
While Ellis may not have like what multitude said about her , that ’s not enough to stifle publication of opinions expressed to the general public . As the court ruled , “ Ellis failed to show that Chan ` contacted ’ her without her consent and the run court of justice drift when it conclude that Chan had stalk Ellis . ”
EFF has call for a Union statute that would clip this eccentric of call against commentary on websites and web access the bud . A federal anti - SLAPP lawwould render bloggers and web site owner with a defence against expensive effectual menace targeting lawful online content , enabling them to file a request in court to get the cases dismissed quickly . At least 28 states already have such law against strategical lawsuits against public participation , or SLAPPs . A similar practice of law at the Union level would protect blogger , internet site owners , and other creators across the nation , and discourage plaintiffs like Ellis from dragging their targets into lawcourt .
The Internet has turned into an peerless forum for discussion and debate , and multitude around the world expend the Web to share info about mass and commercial enterprise they do n’t cerebrate are dealing fairly with others . We are pleased the Georgia motor inn recognized this and protected spare speech online instead of dangerously expanding the compass of the state ’s anti - stalking jurisprudence .
This articlefirst appeared on Electronic Frontier Foundationand is republish here under Creative Commons license . Image byj bunder Creative Commons permission .
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