Woman sued over Tweet for $50K

Why is it that _every_ time a new medium comes out, someone gets lawsuit happy? What happened to freedom of speech?

Source: InformationWeek

What would you rather have, someone file a lawsuit against you where they're required to prove that what you said was not true, or have someone murder you so you don't say anything else ?

Freedom of Speech is designed to allow people who have been wronged to speak up and have justice be served without fear.

Freedom of Speech is not designed to give everyone a wall to hide behind to say anything and everything they want and be immune to civil lawsuits.

A defamation lawsuit is how we determine whether or not Freedom of Speech should protect her right to say these things, or for example sake whether she is just mad that someone in the company dumped her after a one night stand and she just wants to spread negative publicity about the company to get back at them.

I'll be interested to see if this works for the company. I see your point, but I feel that Freedom of Speech is ultimately the right to speak freely without fear of censorship. This type of company (type being defined as "sue first, ask questions later kind of an organization") is precisely why the suit should flop.

People have opinions. The have the right to share them. Web users shouldn't have to worry about crawling into an anonymous hole to protect themselves. If I wrote a blog entry, wrote a letter to an editor, wrote the company themselves, and held a demonstration in front of their business all stating the same complaint, the only place I'd get hung would be the blog. Time for law to catch up to the times.

She's not being censored, they've not asked her to hide anything.

They don't believe what she says is true, and they believe that she is saying it for the sole purpose of casting a negative perspective on them.

They're not hindering her ability to speak freely in any way, they're simply holding her accountable for what she is saying in a civil way.

If what she says is true, she has nothing to fear.

Yeah, if someone wrote in the paper that you were a child molester, you would probably want to be able to settle that in a court of law.

What's happening to people? So simple problem and yet a big deal?

This is a sort of, "I will sue you just because you hate me" kind of thing...

True, but the internet is not fact based.

Anyone can make a website or a tweet and lie.

Accountability is gone in this world.

Kinda scary since so much news/factual information is embedded in net. Guess you just have to decide who to trust and hope your right.

Sure, but as this lawsuit demonstrates, they are still liable. And if you are found guilty of such, I'm sure a judge can order the site taken down, and you can probably also be subject to criminal charges such as public mischief, *in addition* to a civil suit.

People just seem to think they can get away with anything 1) because there is so much out there, 2) because they are too stupid to recognize the difference between a piece that (for example) calls someone a stupid jerk who I hope gets run over by a car (fine) and a piece that falsely claims I slept with so and so, or that someone is a member of the KKK when they are not (not so fine). Those are libellous and you can be subject to legal action, regardless of whether you do it on the net, in the paper, in a board meeting, etc.

This is basically good IMO; you don't have to worry so much about the truth of falsity of things (on a certain level).