Talking smack and even being harassed in chat rooms and IRC servers is a way of life. The majority of users learn to deal with it or find friendlier environs when the heat gets turned up. Others will engage in other forms of online shenanigans in retaliation. Then there's always door number three: the lawsuit (registration required). That's the path chosen by Ohio AOL user George Gillespie who is suing the ISP along with two men for harassing and inflicting emotional distress on him.

First, the back story. Gillespie began hanging out in an AOL chat room that defendants Mike Marlowe of Alabama and Bob Charpentier of Oregon frequented. As often happens, smack-talking, teasing, and references to the attractiveness of participants' mothers, wives, and girlfriends were made. However, Gillespie said Marlowe and Charpentier carried things a bit too far.

In addition, Gillespie alleges that Marlowe went so far as to drive up from Alabama and fill out a Change of Address Form at the local post office in an attempt to interfere with his receipt of the mail. All in all, it sounds like the kind of thing most of us got over by the end of college.

Enter AOL. Since the alleged harassment began in an AOL chat room, and since the ISP apparently failed to act in accordance with Gillespie's wishes with regards to barring Marlowe and Charpentier from "abusing" him, the online giant is fair game in the eyes of Gillespie and his attorneys. The problem comes along when one stops to consider case law.

First, ISPs and forums are not legally responsible for the content of their users' communications. While they must take down content that is illegal, comments posted on message boards can be left alone at the ISP's discretion. Comments made in a chat room on AOL, on an AOL forum, or on IRC would appear to fall into this category. In addition is the question of whether comments on a message board are credible and believable. In 2003, an executive of a financial services company was exonerated of charges that he defamed a competing company with his posts on a forum. His attorneys successfully argued that "connecting a statement in a chat room to a specific stock is largely impossible."

Gillespie is obviously angry about what he perceives as unjust treatment from the likes of AOL along with the other two defendants. Gillespie may have a harassment case against the gentlemen from Alabama and Oregon. But even if Marlowe's and Charpentier's derision of Gillespie occurred entirely on AOL, he's barking up the wrong tree in his naming AOL in his lawsuit. Given the legal precedents, it's a lot like suing the Post Office because they delivered a threatening letter.

written by Eric Bangeman
found on arstechnica.com