Facebook post costs couple R40 000 September 5 2013 at 07:50am By ZELDA VENTER "..... Be careful what you share or tag: Candidate attorney Stuart Scott at Weber Wentzel Attorneys gives a few pointers on the responsible use of Facebook to minimise the risk of being held liable for defamation: “Our law does not require the defendant to be the originator of the defamatory content. Merely repeating a defamatory statement made by another person may constitute defamation. On Facebook it follows that ‘sharing’ a defamatory post would be sufficient to meet the publication requirement. “The second defendant (in this case) was held equally liable for postings authored by the first defendant even though he was merely tagged. It is because the second defendant knew that he was tagged in the postings and allowed his name to be used. “To minimise risk, set your privacy settings on Facebook so that comments that you are tagged in are not immediately published on your wall (and must be individually approved before they appear). Alternatively, where you have reason to suspect that a comment in which you are tagged is defamatory you should immediately untag yourself and thereby remove the comment from your wall. “The defamatory comments need not refer to the plaintiff directly or by name. The test is whether the defamatory words would be understood to be published of and concerning the plaintiff. The court’s approach in this case demonstrates that, when determining whether the remarks refer to the plaintiff, each posting need not be interpreted separately. “When determining whether the content has a defamatory meaning, this judgment shows that…a series of comments may have a defamatory meaning when read collectively.” Pretoria News."
Posted on: Thu, 05 Sep 2013 13:48:58 +0000
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