Neighborhood blogger U Street Girl acknowledged in a post late last night that she had removed a comment that had been posted to her blog after receiving an email from David Shott, the owner of planned new wine bar Du Vin Osteria. Shott had threatened legal action against the blog, according to its author.
It is with regret that I write this post and removed the comment. I wish Mr. Shott had come to me in a more friendly manner and had not immediately written the words “legal action” to a young professional who blogs on her spare time. I was trying to promote Mr. Shott’s business. I posted the comment because it seemed to raise relevant concerns about Mr. Shott.
The context is this: U Street Girl had put up a simple announcement about Shott’s business plans — a new wine bar coming to the Solea at 14th and Florida NW — and then one of her readers added a comment that wasn’t particularly complimentary about Shott. Basically, the commenter said he felt Shott was a difficult guy to get along with, and accused Shott of having sent “several insulting and threatenning [sic] emails” to an email list associated with Union Row, another nearby condo building. A call to Shott from DCist was not immediately returned.
Regardless of whether the comment in question may have contained libelous statements, it’s important for neighborhood bloggers to know that they cannot be held legally responsible for user generated content on their web sites, which includes comments sections. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act specifically protects bloggers and web authors who host comments or other online forums from these sorts of threats. As long as the information at issue is provided by a third-party — a commenter — and not by the blog author, the author enjoys broad immunity from liability for any defamatory statements. And that doesn’t change if a blogger spends time moderating their comments section. So long as the specific comment was never altered by the blogger, they are not legally responsible for its contents.
In this case, U Street Girl would have been entirely within her rights to refuse to remove the comment, but she says she did so anyway out of an abundance of caution. Fair enough. In the meantime, she’s vowed never to visit Shott’s wine bar when it does finally open, and is encouraging her readers to do the same. So there’s a lesson here for local business owners, as well. It’s understandable that in the age of Yelp, businesses are desperately trying to figure out how to manage their reputations online. But threaten a blogger with a loyal readership in the very neighborhood where you’re trying to make inroads, and you may end up on the wrong end of a boycott. It’s almost always better to engage with bloggers and in comments sections, and attempt to correct any misconceptions you feel may be out there, before making threats. And if you do feel the need to threaten a lawsuit, make sure the law is actually on your side before doing so.
