New York Court of Appeals Applies the Single Publication Rule to Internet Defamation
September, 2002
In Firth v. State of New York, 2002 WL 1418699, the Court of Appeals applied the single publication rule to defamation which is committed over the Internet via Web site posting. As a result of this decision, an Internet publisher will not be exposed to a new cause of action whenever its Web page is viewed or updated. As unrelated changes to a Web site do not amount to the republishing of an article, the statute of limitations is not extended with each modification. This is an important case as it indicates that the Court will not blindly apply traditional mass media jurisprudence to the Internet, but will consider how policies and rules applicable to other media might inhibit or otherwise affect the new medium of cyberspace.
Facts
Plaintiff George Firth was the director of the Division of Law Enforcement of the Department of Environmental Conservation. At a December 16, 1996 press conference, the Office of the New York State Inspector General issued a report titled “Best Bang for Their Buck,” which criticized Mr. Firth’s managerial style and weapons procurement efforts. The State Education Department posted an Executive Summary of the Report on its Government Locator Internet Web site, with links to the Report’s full text. Routine changes in content were made to other postings on the Web site, but the text of the Report at issue and its Executive Summary remained unchanged.
Mr. Firth claimed that the report was defamatory and brought suit against the State of New York on March 18, 1998, which was more than one year after the Report was first released and published on the Internet. Because the statute of limitations for defamation is one year, the State moved to dismiss the complaint as time-barred. The plaintiff responded that the addition of unrelated content to the Web site constituted a republication of the Report and thus a new statute of limitations began for each republication. The court below rejected this argument and dismissed the action. The Appellate Division affirmed, with two Judges dissenting on the ground that updates to the State’s Web site could constitute a republication and start a new statute of limitations.
Analysis
Under New York’s single publication rule, “the publication of a defamatory statement in a single issue of a newspaper, or a single issue of magazine, although such publication consists of thousands of copies widely distributed, is, in legal effect, one publication which gives rise to one cause of action and...the applicable statute of limitations runs from the date of that publication.” Gregoire v. G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 298 N.Y. 119, 123 (1948). Because a Web site may be altered at any time by its publisher or owner and because publications on the Internet are available only to those who seek them, plaintiff argued that each “hit” or viewing of the Report should be considered a new publication that retriggers the statute of limitations. Plaintiff thus advocated that the early common law multiple publication approach be followed, under which each communication of a defamatory statement to a third person constituted a separate publication giving rise to a new cause of action.
The Court of Appeals disagreed with plaintiff and affirmed the grant of summary judgment for the State. The Court found that “[c]ommunications accessible over a public Web site resemble those contained in traditional mass media, only on a far grander scale.” The Court thus reasoned that “a multiple publication rule would implicate an even greater potential for endless retriggering of the statute of limitations, multiplicity of lawsuits and harassment of defendants. Inevitably, there would be a serious inhibitory effect on the open, pervasive dissemination of information and ideas over the Internet, which is, of course, its greatest beneficial promise.” Thus the Court ruled that each “hit” did not constitute a republication.
Likewise, the Court held that a modification of material unrelated to the text of the subject report did not constitute a republication. In doing so, the Court deviated from mass media jurisprudence on the basis that there was no reasonable inference that the publisher sought to communicate the earlier published material to a new audience. In reaching its finding, the Court observed that public Web sites, including the Court’s own site, are by their very nature in a constant state of change and are constantly updated with new information. The Court was wary of discouraging or slowing the placement of information and thus reducing the Internet’s advantages. The Court considered that policies underlying defamation case law required a different treatment for this burgeoning new medium.
Learning Point:
Although the Internet is sometimes analogous to other media, it is clearly considered by the Court of Appeals as its own distinct entity. Thus the Court will not blindly apply current media law to the Internet in a knee-jerk fashion. Instead, the primary focus of the Court will be to examine and fit the policy considerations which underlie defamation and media jurisprudence, as related to other mediums, to the Internet. Finally, it appears that the Court will steadfastly refuse to apply defamation law that will needlessly inhibit the Internet. •
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