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Plotting The Return Of An Ancient Tort To Cyberspace: Towards A New Federal Standard Of Responsibility For Defamation For Internet Service Providers, Christopher Butler Jun 2000

Plotting The Return Of An Ancient Tort To Cyberspace: Towards A New Federal Standard Of Responsibility For Defamation For Internet Service Providers, Christopher Butler

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

Though the rapid development of the Internet has created a fertile ground for legal innovation, more often than not legislators and courts have sought to address this relatively new medium by attempting to squeeze it into precedents and paradigms better suited to older forms of communication, technology, and media. Part I of this article looks back at the courts' initial efforts at addressing defamation via the Internet. From the start the courts attempted to fit the role of the ISP into the common law's categorizing of print media as either "publishers" or "distributors" of information. One court's misstep in overextending …


Liability Issues Facing Online Businesses, David E. Shipley Jan 2000

Liability Issues Facing Online Businesses, David E. Shipley

Scholarly Works

Online businesses are confronted by a wide variety of liability issues covering almost the full range of the standard law school curriculum. The liability problems that face a small business in Vidalia, Georgia, which is selling Vidalia onion products at specialty stores, through print advertising, and by mail, do not go away when the business starts marketing through a Web site. In fact, there might be more exposure doing business online, and there are variations depending upon the nature of the business in question. For example, as discussed below, an Internet Service Provider ("ISP") like America Online has worries that …