Animal Hospital Case

Channel 2, a Japanese bulletin board, has tried to invoke the safe harbor in an online libel actions, claiming that as an operator it could not know or reasonably know that any given bulletin post was defamatory.  The Supreme Court rejected these arguments and found Channel 2 liable on the rationale that, given the large amount of defamatory and “unreliable” content in threads found on its site, it was not necessary for Channel 2 to know that each thread was defamatory, but it was sufficient that Channel 2 had the knowledge that there was a risk that such transmissions/posts could be defamatory.