Love's Online Spat Sparks First Twitter Libel Suit
Courtney Love's angry "tweets" against her former fashion designer, Dawn Simorangkir, have landed her in court. According to a libel claim lodged by Simorangkir in Los Angeles Superior Court last Thursday, the widow of Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain has carried out "an obsessive and delusional crusade" of malicious libel against her on Twitter, adding insult on MySpace and other websites. [Independent]
There is an inherent problem with this lawsuit, and that is opinion. To many, Twitter is a forum of opinions not facts. It is a way to distribute what is occurring in your life and what you are thinking. By attaching your name to it, you are indicating that you, as an individual, are stating (or thinking) this. Twitter does not imply nor require that the tweets you publish be true because readers should be intelligent enough to understand that these tweets are matters of opinion. Sure, there are facts posted all the time, but the underlying idea behind twitter is that it is inherently opinionated because of its user generated origin. No user should take the opinion (tweet) of another to be fact without doing appropriate secondary research and confirmation.
When it comes to libel I believe there is a significant difference between crafting a website and publishing material about someone from an authoritative standpoint or perspective versus posting it in an opinion dominated forum. In the end this lawsuit will come down to if the defendant can prove that the statements made are true or solely matter of opinion. Truth is always an absolute defense in cases of libel.
Laws regarding libel (and potentially slander) should be adapted and crafted to more explicitly outline how they are to be applied and interpreted, especially revolving around online websites and opinion-based services such as Twitter.
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