Nasty blogging is the wave of the future! Unfortunately, anyone can write almost anything online and not even acknowledge who they are. Therefore, you can get slammed and once any kind of slander hits the Web, it’s floating around in cyber space for life. The question is: Can you do anything about it?

According to The National Law Journal’s Joel Cohen & Katherine A. Helm, “47 U.S.C. 230(c) confers broad protection for both the blocking and screening of offensive material. As interpreted, it basically gives blanket immunity to blog owners for most speech by third parties, whether prescreened, automatically posted or later removed.

“The “Zeran rule” is that the blog author/owner cannot, except in very limited circumstances, be held liable if an anonymous commentator posts the harmful information. This holds true whether the owner is an individual running a blog in his basement, or the New York Times Co. outfitting its online edition with blogs or article comments.”

Therefore, while an actual blogger can be held responsible, the publication is liable-free. The blogger’s bashing may be ordered to get taken down, but let’s keep it real…once material online has been out there for a while, it can pop up like magic, regardless of the material’s removal.

Basically, the law hasn’t caught up to the web regarding slander, yet. The only real defense is to take the “cyber law” into your own hands. What does that mean exactly? Slander back…or threaten a retaliation. Words can be brutal and when it comes to the worldwide Web, no one should throw stones from glass houses.

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