Defamation of character:
http://www.bitlaw.com/internet/linking.html
The term defamation refers to a false statement made about someone or some
organization that is damaging to their reputation. The law of defamation is
complex, as it has been determined by numerous court decisions rather than one
national statute. In addition, claims of defamation are subject to first
amendment defenses. As a result, a full explanation of defamation will not be
set forth here. However, it should be noted that a link to another's page or
image could be defamatory, and hence subject someone to legal liability. An
example defamatory link would be: This man killed my cat, stole my invention,
and threatened to destroy the Internet. The statement itself does not identify
the party. The link itself (assuming it actually linked to someone) provides the
context that turns the statement into defamation."
Libel Pertaining to the ISP:
http://www.bitlaw.com/internet/isp.html
There is a recent U.S. Decision which is good news for discussion list
moderators: The Ninth Circuit has held that under 47 U.S.C. sec. 230, discussion
group moderators are immune from defamation liability for messages posted to
their groups, if those messages were originally written by other people (whether
group members or not) and then sent to the moderator to be forwarded to the
group. This is true even if the moderators manually let those messages go
through, or even if they manually posted them; and it's true even if the
moderators are quite selective in deciding which messages to post. Under
traditional defamation law, the moderators would be legally liable; but 47 U.S.C.
sec. 230 limits online defamation liability in certain circumstances, and the
Ninth Circuit held that this is one of those circumstances.
And here's an overview of libel at:
http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/speech/internet/topic.aspx?topic=online_libel
