Silencing John Doe: Defamation & Discourse in Cyberspace

Lyrissa Barnett Lidsky
2000 Duke law journal  
John Doe has become a popular defamation defendant as corporations and their officers bring defamation suits for statements made about them in Internet discussion fora. These new suits are not even arguably about recovering money damages but instead are brought for symbolic reasons-some worthy, some not so worthy. If the only consequence of these suits were that Internet users were held accountable for their speech, the suits would be an unalloyed good. However, these suits threaten to suppress
more » ... legitimate criticism along with intentional and reckless falsehoods, and existing First Amendment law doctrines are not responsive to the threat these suits pose to Internet discourse. Although the constitutional privilege for opinion holds promise as a solution to this problem, the Supreme Court's jurisprudence provides little assurance that the privilege can protect the "robust, uninhibited, and wide-open nature" of Internet discourse without giving Internet speakers free license to harm the reputation of , for reading the draft quickly and making incisive comments at critical stages of its development and to my research assistant Robert Lancaster for his extraordinary dedication in the final stages of the process. My other research assistants, Christopher Vallandingham and Susan Wynn, also provided great research support. Finally, I would like to thank all of the lawyers and parties involved in the new Internet libel cases who were kind enough to share their stories and their documents with me.
doi:10.2307/1373038 fatcat:vrijop4rfnhfnhykmsaif54i2e