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From Ars Technica:
Imagine you just purchased a shiny new wireless router from Amazon, only to discover that the product doesn't work as you anticipated. To vent frustration and perhaps help others avoid the same mistake, you leave a negative product review-but some of your claims ultimately turn out to be incorrect or misleading. Now the company's attorneys want to sue you for your "illegal campaign to damage, discredit, defame, and libel" it. Are you going down in flames? Or can you say what you want on the Internet? As with many areas of law, the answers are nuanced and complicated. Our primer, however, will help you avoid the obvious pitfalls.
The article contains advice from defamation lawyer Lee Berlik and free speech attorney Paul Alan Levy.
(Score: 1) by RaffArundel on Thursday May 15 2014, @02:12PM
Well, from the summary:
So, I guess the question is - are you incorrect/misleading?
Actually the REAL questions are - what country did you post from? What country is the manufacturer in? How big a jack-hole are they? Can they get you in a sympathetic (for them) court? Is it worth their time to go after you? Why don't they just lie and DMCA your comment for some stupid reason and make the site pull down the review?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday May 15 2014, @02:46PM
Can you prove that indeed I don't hold the expressed opinion? Because if you can't, then the fact I have an opinion is correct. Also, the fact that I stated for the very beginning it is an opinion makes invalid any claim I'd try to mislead.
Heck, what about: "FSM - bless His noodly appendages - told me so about you and your product, last night in my dreams. As such, I firmly believe it. Are you trying to stop exercising my right to spread the word of my Deity?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2, Interesting) by RaffArundel on Thursday May 15 2014, @05:29PM
Very good questions - and if it were up to me, I'd call you a twit for disagreeing or brilliant for agreeing, because I recognize what an opinion actually is. However, as this story indicates, people get stupid when money is involved.
I'm not sure how to judge opinions when it comes to misleading others, but I'd say it has to do with intent. Let's strap on some skis and hit the slipperly-slope for a moment with "I believe that c0lo is a [pick a wide range of questionable moral and/or criminal things]" in a public forum and your boss/sig-other/whoever reads it. If I know it is false, and placed with the pretense to attack you - then no amount of "well, it is just an opinion" negates the intent to mislead.
Actually, you just proved my second point - FSM aside, Scientology isn't a religion in some places, so they don't have the right to scam people under that protection. So, no, at least in some places hiding behind "opinion" or "belief" doesn't protect you from making statements you know are incorrect or misleading (you are lying, you know it, and it is intentional) - you are liable.
The question is actually around intent - and yeah, I'd have to prove you did it maliciously (at least here in the US) if I didn't have enough resources ($$$) to silence your opinion in other ways.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday May 16 2014, @03:11AM
Proving intent is a bitch, and I'm glad it is so.
If the society allows the expression of any opinions (even with the condition to be stated as such), then "intent" is moot - I can't be compelled to state whatever intent (the accuser needs to demonstrate it) and good luck to her/him in trying to demonstrate beyond doubt a certain intent.
If the society does not allow the expression of all opinions, then you'll have to navigate carefully in what you are saying (such societies are likely to be in various degree of misalignment with Art 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights [un.org]) in which case "intent" may be a low priority in the list of your worries
If you make clear "It's an opinion" and qualify your statements with "I think that..."/"I believe that...", then I can do nothing against you and I'll do nothing (because it's a waste of time). Of course, I'll do enough (usually by my behavior) to at least cast a doubt on your opinions or beliefs; in most of the cases, I don't need to do anything more special than what I'm doing every day; on the long run, it pays to be moral, even if only from a pragmatical PoV.
Point: nowadays, I don't consider "I believe that c0lo is a [pick a wide range of questionable moral and/or criminal things]" posted in public as threat to me. It wasn't always so, though: I grew under one of the East Europe communist regimes (under which you'd have to be very careful with what you say: wrong words to wrong persons and you'd have troubles even to stay alive).
That was a pure intellectual exercise (testing the limits of the system). Personally, I'd never use such an approach, because:
* I'm not wasting my time expressing opinions just for the sake of denigrating someone
* I don't need the "divine intervention and/or authority" excuse to guide my life (even if I do hold some sort of religious sentiments).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford