Locational libel

Image by takomabibelot

A new site called Please Rob Me has been creating a bit of buzz on Twitter. Basically, it is a mashup collecting locational information from social networking sites to highlight the risks of broadcasting this (after all, if you are checking in at Bobby's Bar then by definition you are not at home).

The information is all publicly available and, according to the site's disclaimer:-

"Our intention is not, and never has been, to have people burglarized..."

but it will hopefully achieve its aim of making people think a little more carefully about how they share these details.

Meanwhile, I have identified another risk of these locational services and, in the process, have created a new legal concept (or at least a legal concept previously unknown to Google) which I am going to call "locational libel".

I have included a very rough guide of the requirements for libel and defamation in the FAQ section for those who want it, but the key concept is that the defamatory statement has to identify the person (or company) being defamed.

This is where the concept of locational libel comes in (strictly this may be locational slander, but I prefer the alliteration!).

A tweet to my followers reading

"just stormed out of meeting with solicitor - he is incompetent and crooked"

may or may not be defamation... it will depend on whether readers would see this as being "of and concerning" a particular solicitor or firm (and of course whether it is true!).

However, what if that tweet is tagged as being sent from the location of my particular solicitor's office meaning that in some Twitter clients the location shows up in Google Maps?

The answer isn't really clear at this stage, but I can't see any reason why a Court wouldn't accept this as identifying the claimant provided that at least one Twitter follower had made the connection.

You read it here first.... locational libel coming soon to a newspaper near you!

Thanks to takemobibelot for the image. Full attribution link and licensing:-

http://www.flickr.com/photos/takomabibelot/ / CC BY 2.0

Update on Friday, February 19, 2010 at 8:41AM by Peninsulawyer

For the truly paranoid @chriscsefalvay made an excellent point on Twitter last night which I had never even considered:-

GPS positioning is never 100% accurate and the case of Hulton v Jones (commented on in this article in the Independent) is authority for the fact that it is no defence to a claim for defamation that the defendant did not intend to defame the claimant in question provided that "reasonable people" would believe that the statement did relate to the claimant.

Could this mean that a true statement made about Solicitor A whilst in their offices, but which is incorrectly geotagged as coming from Solicitor B's office could leave me liable for defamation of solicitor B?

On a strict interpretation this could be the case (although it seems extremely harsh).

Anyway, a great point from Chris - will be interesting to see how the law develops on this. 

Comments

[Mike Mintz]

Love this post! I have been reading the news of the Please Rob Me site, which I think was started as a joke. In any case, the question of whether geo-tagging adds the necessary elements to elevate a tweet to the level of libel. Plenty of people on Twitter today are posting libelous statements and I wonder if the easy of publishing real time updates will change the law of libel rather than the other way around. Thoughts?