In June, the New Jersey Supreme Court rendered an opinion in the case of Too Much Media, LLC et al. v. Shellee Hale, which is of interest to all those using the Internet.
This was a defamation case in which the Plaintiff sued the Defendant who had created his own website which he put forth as his own "online" news magazine and bulletin board for the public to exchange information about criminal activity in the adult entertainment industry. Defendant claimed that he conducted investigations into the industry including interviews and attendance at trade shows and examination of pornography web pages and from this investigation he obtained information about the Plaintiff.
Although his web page was created, Defendant never formally launched the page and instead, used the information he gathered by posting comments about the Plaintiff on other site's message boards.
Plaintiff, a software publisher which provides software to adult entertainment sites to keep track of referral fees generated from a particular site, claimed that Defendant reported falsely that there were security breaches in Plaintiff's software and that Defendant's postings caused it to incur damages.
Typically, under what is called the "Shield Law" news reporters are provided protection from disclosing their sources. New Jersey's Shield Law (N.J.S.A., 2A:84A-21 to 21.8) permits reporters to keep their sources confidential. Most states have similar statutes. In this lawsuit, Plaintiff sought to determine who made the statements to the Defendant upon which Defendant's false statements were based. Defendant refused to provide the information claiming protection as a reporter. The issue before the Court was whether someone who posts messages on bulletin boards is entitled to Shield Law protection.
In refusing to extend the protection to the Defendant, the Court concluded that online messages are not the type of news organizations included in the Shield Law.
In summary, anyone in New Jersey who posts a message on a bulletin board based upon information provided by someone else, can be compelled to reveal who provided that information.
