Internet Libel Lawyer | How to Defend Against Online Defamation & Libel

In today's digital world, it is easier than ever to share thoughts and ideas with the general public. It is also easier to defame people and businesses, often under the veil of online anonymity.  Attorney Mark Clark discusses strategies to protect your reputation against internet libel, slander, and defamation.

Announcer: Welcome to Defamation Law Radio. Internet defamation is as easy to perpetuate as a blog post or forum comment. Your online reputation is measured by the website’s return as Google search results. Do you know what people are saying in writing about you? This program is brought to you by Traverse Defamation Law. Internet libel lawyers with frontline experience handling Internet Defamation cases for clients like you. Contact Traverse Legal today and find out how to protect your online reputation.

Damien Allen: Good morning and welcome to Defamation Law Radio. My name is Damien Allen, and joining us on the phone today is Mark Clark of Traverse Legal, PLC. Goood morning, Mark and welcome to the program.

Mark Clark: Thank you, Damien. We are talking about online reputation protection this morning for both personal and for business purposes, as well. And there things that one can do for both their personal reputation that’s damaged on the internet, as well as their business reputation which may be damaged on the internet due to false and defamatory statements to remove the offending statements online. And as an online defamation attorney there are a few things that we can do in order to assist both you personally and your business and help protect your reputations. As you know Damien, building a reputation is everything and it can be immaterially damaged by just a few simple statements on the internet and when someone goes to find you, as people do these days via the internet, you’re reputation is important. So, if there are Google searches and other searches that are turning up false and defamatory statements concerning either you or your business, it can be significantly damaging. There are studies that if you do nothing concerning your online defamation issues and don’t protect your personal and business reputations it can cost you thousands and thousands of dollars.

Damien Allen: What exactly constitutes defamation, Mark?

Mark Clark: Well, a defamatory statement is a statement of fact that is both false and defamatory and what that means is it’s not only inaccurate factually, but that it has a tendency to harm your reputation. In other words, it’s negative. Someone can make a false statement about you on the internet that’s not defamatory if the material doesn’t tend to cause harm in some way. Now, there is also material that is considered defamation per se, and that means defamation in and of its self. And that is, if somebody falsely accuses you of criminal conduct or infidelity or unchased behavior, for instance, that is automatically considered to be defamatory. There’s also derogatory information that’s not necessarily defamatory but that we can sometimes deal with by way of letter to an internet service provider or website that holds the material.

DamienAllen: Now besides these threat letters to get them to take this down, what are some other strategies that can be used in order to halt this action being taken?

Mark Clark: Well, initially, what we typically will do is we’ll start out with consideration of a threat letter. Now, simply to send a threat letter without doing the research and determining whether, in fact, it’s defamatory and whether or not the website that it appears on has certain policies that may afford you options concerning takedowns is ill-advised. What we generally recommend is that an assessment be done both as to the content of the information being posted in terms of whether it is defamatory and, even if it’s not defamatory, there may be terms of use and privacy policies that the website may adhere to that would provide options for taking it down. Oftentimes, a threat letter to the website can be effective, even though you don’t know who posted it and even though it may not technically be, or fit the category as something that is per se defamatory. But aside from threat letters, other legal options include litigation. Litigation often assists in identifying the person posting the information because that is information that is otherwise difficult to obtain from a website or an internet service provider under their terms of use policies and their privacy policies, oftentimes, they will not divulge that type of information and it’s necessary to file a lawsuit. But there are other strategies for minimizing the impact of online defamation, either personal or business defamation. And those are really non-legal strategies and there are services that can include strategies for putting up content organically online that will move the derogatory or defamatory information off page one and make it more difficult for people searching you or your business to find the offending information. There are other strategies which include setting up competing websites or simply filling up other forums with positive content that will offset the negative content and the search engines will pick that bulk content up and move what remains down the search engines chain, so to speak.

Damien Allen: How often are people successful in getting the defamatory comments pulled off the internet?

Mark Clark: Well, more often than you think, Damien. Pulling defamatory content off the internet is not always easy, but personally, I’ve had great success in sending well-crafted threat letters to the internet service providers or websites and comparing what is being posted oftentimes with their own website policies and have been successful in obtaining the removal of the offending content. So, it’s not simply expensive litigation that achieves results. Oftentimes, it’s only a threat letter. And rather than deal with the threat of litigation, oftentimes sites will simply remove the content rather than deal with a continuing legal issue.

Damien Allen: What are some things people can do to help protect their reputation online, Mark?

Mark Clark: Well, there’s not a lot you can do to prevent somebody from posting defamation or derogatory material about you online so it’s very difficult to guard against. But, if you are a celebrity, for instance, or you’re the owner of a larger business, you can take some steps to do some searches to determine what content is out there because oftentimes people just simply don’t know. So, if you are an agent or a manager of a business or an individual, you’re going to want to do periodic searches in order to determine whether your client or business is being harmed. So, the thing to do in terms of vigilance is to do the searches. Be vigilant and attack those where they are coming up high on your search engine results and the only way to deal with online defamation, initially, is typically a threat letter. So, before you decide to sue for defamation, I would recommend that an agent or manger of any business contact an attorney specializing in online defamation law to find out all of the options that may be available in a particular situation and make sure that the material comes down because if you do not take steps to remove harmful or defamatory material online, it will cause uncalculable harm both to your business reputation and your personal reputation, as applicable.

Damien Allen: Well, thank you for joining us today Mark and explaining how we can defend our online reputations.

Mark Clark: Damien, it’s always a pleasure and I look forward to our next visit.

Damien Allen: You’ve been listening to Defamation Law Radio. My name is Damien Allen. Everybody have a great afternoon.