I do a "make money online" reviews website, reviewing various money making systems that are advertised online and involve working online. Recently, a company that I reviewed emailed me ( I guess they looked up my whois info) and requested that I delete a comment that a user posted about one of my articles. The comment says "******** is %100 scam. they do play with shares and put it in their fav. they make you win the first 2 or 3 weeks, then after awhile, u always losse ALWAYS" I believe that people are entitled to their own opinions and I do not want to interfere with that. In the email that they sent, they went so far as to call it slander. My question is this: Can I be held legally responsible for this, as the comment appears on my blog? Thank you.
There are going to be varying legal opinions on this, and the answer will depend on the structure of your website. If your website operates in a Web 2.0 manner where users have accounts (to post comments), you can structure your Terms of Service so that you operate as a "Online Service Provider". If you comply with Title II of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. Section 512 ("DMCA"), you can structure your site so that users are responsible for the content they post. Parties who wish to file a libel case against you will have a difficult time. They'll really need to go after the original poster. You have to clearly state in your ToS that users are responsible for the content they post. What you post is a different matter. You can avoid most cases of libel by prefacing all statements with, "Its is my opinion that..." Opinion statements are not grounds for a libel case. However, if you say something like, "Company X is scamming customers!", you might be opening yourself up to civil litigation. Just make sure all statements are opinions
An addendum: You mentioned slander in your original post. This indicates the party that emailed you has no idea what they're talking about. Slander is defamation via oral speech whereas libel is defamation via written speech. All websites fall under libel, unless you're posting video or audio files.
In the email, it sounded like the person spoke / typed broken english. There were lots of run on sentences and other grammatical errors. I have the ip address of the original poster, but I'm not sure if it will help. For now, I'll leave the comment up. Thanks!
There's a free geographical DNS tool posted here: http://www.megawebworld.com/web/geo.php Plug in a IP address and it will tell you what region of the world the IP address comes from.
Feedback is not a crime ! It can be left at any time, anywhere and for various reasons - all these email letters are BS ! If they would want to take legal action, they would contact you via postal letter.