Courtney Love Defames On Internet (Twitter), Must Settle

"As part of a legal settlement, the musician and actress Courtney Love agreed to begin paying $430,000 this week to a fashion designer who claimed that Ms. Love had posted multiple defamatory 140-character remarks about her on Twitter in March 2009, ruining her reputation and her business. Dawn Simorangkir, the clothing and accessories designer behind the Boudoir Queen line from Austin, Tex., also accused Ms. Love of making disparaging comments about her on MySpace and Etsy.com during a dispute over a $4,000 payment for a dress. Ms. Love, the lead singer for Hole, argued that she was expressing her opinions online and that Ms. Simorangkir’s business did not suffer as the result of the dispute and had in fact, benefited from the publicity of doing business with her. The case was closely watched not only because Ms. Love’s celebrity arises partly from having made a public spectacle of herself during the last two decades. It also would have been one of the first high-profile cases addressing the question of what amounts to defamation on social sites and whether alleged defamatory remarks disseminated on social sites have more or less impact than if they were broadcast or published in traditional media."