Chain Chain Chain, Chain of Legal Liability
Let’s say you’ve decided to take action. If you ask the defamer to remove the objectionable material directly, your request isn’t likely to be honored and will most likely generate more online abuse and exposure. However, that isn’t the end of the story. Even if the defamer posts under a pseudonym, lives in a foreign country, or is defaming you on his or her own site, so long as the company that hosts the site is based in a country with libel laws, you’re still in business.

The defamer is just one of the people in the chain of legal liability for internet defamation, and certain others in the chain are usually easier for you to get to—and have a lot more to lose. The chain consists of every person or company involved in the creation, publication and presentation of the offending material. This group may include:

1.Discussion group administrator
2.Site administrator
3.Site editor
4.Site owner
5.Blog or Site platform/software provider
6.Content aggregator
7.Site hosting company
You’ll probably find you’re wasting your time lodging a complaint with parties #1 - #4, even if the site or discussion board in question has specific prohibitions against defamation in its Terms of Use (ToU) or Acceptable Use Policy (AUP). All of these people are usually ignorant of the law, and will tend to dismiss your complaint. Worse, if any of them are pals with the defamer, your complaint will likely backfire.

There are certain legal protections that tend to insulate #5 and #6 from most claims relating to the objectionable or illegal use of their services by individuals, so these are also usually dead ends. And this brings us to #7: the hosting company.

Dear America,
Egypt's Mubarak regime today shut down Internet and cell phone communications before launching a violent crackdown against protesters.
Free Press has just discovered that one American company — Boeing-owned Narus of Sunnyvale, Calif. — has sold Egypt "Deep Packet Inspection" (DPI) equipment that can be used by the regime to track, target and crush political dissent over the Internet and mobile phones.1
Egyptian security forces have already arrested leading opposition figures for speaking out online. At such a crucial moment of democratic upheaval, it’s shocking that an American company would help Egypt repress its people.
Since the 2009 crackdown in Iran, Free Press has raised the alarm over the abuse of this technology. Today, we’re calling on Congress to investigate global trafficking in DPI technology by American firms. Add your name to our letter now.
Lawmakers of both parties seem to agree that democracy everywhere is at risk when you let repressive regimes block open networks.
"Internet Censorship is a real challenge, and not one any particular industry — much less any single company — can tackle on its own, " California Rep. Mary Bono Mack wrote in 2009. "Efforts to promote freedom of expression and to limit the impact of censorship require both private and public sector engagement."
Yesterday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged Egypt's government "not to prevent peaceful protests or block communications, including on social media."
The power to control the Internet and the resulting harm to democracy are so disturbing that the threshold for using DPI must be set very high. That’s why, before DPI becomes more widely used around the world and at home, the U.S. government must establish clear and legitimate criteria for governing the use of such surveillance and control technologies.
Tell Congress to protect free speech online at home and abroad, and to investigate DPI now.
Today, as we’re watching the grave dangers of DPI technology unfold in real time on the streets of Cairo, it’s urgent that our lawmakers do everything they can to protect free speech and democracy.
Thank you,

Timothy Karr
Campaign Director
Free Press
1. Timothy Karr, "One U.S. Corporation's Role in Egypt's Brutal Crackdown, " Huffington Post, 1/28/11: http://act2.freepress.net/go/1989?akid=2287.9843506.EwRslv&t=9