RE: Internet and defamation laws

From: Rafal Smigrodzki (rms2g@virginia.edu)
Date: Fri Jan 31 2003 - 12:28:52 MST


owner-extropians@extropy.org wrote:
> "Brett Paatsch" <paatschb@ocean.com.au> Wrote:
>
> > I like free speech AND defamation laws.
>
> Mutually exclusive.

### Yeah, right.

----------------
 In the long run everybody would benefit if
> defamation laws were abolished, except for trial lawyers. You seem to
> think that if we didn't have libel laws the sum total of all
> reputations in a society would go down, I don't see how that could
> happen and don't see how it would matter if it did, reputation is a
> relative scale after all. I think libel laws just make reputations
> more inaccurate.

### Exactly, you put it very well - the sum total of all reputations would
be reduced. In a bazaar of uncheckable claims, there is no way of separating
the wheat from chaff. The easier it is to verify the truth or falsity of a
statement, the better, whether it is achieved by universal transparency, or
competing, libertarian courts.

-----------------
>
> > Free speech can sometimes be cheap speech.
>
> It usually is, but so what? If I say bad things about you it will
> only be really damaging to you if my reputation is good. If I have a
> history of making similar charges that turned out to be untrue
> anything I say will just be shrugged off. I think a free market of
> ideas should determine what is true and what is not, the idea of some
> an official body making such a decree gives me the creeps.

### You should be absolutely free to shrug off the opinions of the official
body (the jury), I agree. But those who trust a group of randomly selected,
financially uninvolved citizens more than a religious, or political group,
or a direct economic competitor, will have the option of incorporating the
jury's findings into their decisions.

--------------------

>
> >By leveraging knowledge of the law one can delegate.
>
> Why not delegate to your potential customers, let them figure out
> what your reputation should be.

### Simple - the transaction costs are too high. The cost of finding out the
truth is too high for your customers to pay, and this is why a court (paid,
ideally, by the losing side of the suit) is the right body to find and make
the truth freely available.

------------------------

 The successful ones will be those who
> have correctly determined what your reputation should be, those who
> don't want to do business with you because they incorrectly think
> your reputation is too low will soon be put out of business by those
> who make the correct judgments.

### Your customers who incorrectly conclude you are a poor milk producer (by
believing libelous claims that your cows suffer from the BGH you use, while
in fact the cows are doing just fine), will suffer only minor economic
damage. On the other hand, all progressive farmers, who want to use BGH,
will be scared of boycotts, leading to higher prices.

Defamation laws, correctly formulated (not the same as today), do improve
economic efficiency, therefore they are to be supported.

Rafal



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