In a lawsuit that may have repercussions around the world, Twitter has been sued for defamation, based on its publication of alleged defamatory Tweets made by one of its users. The libelous Tweet was Tweeted by Australian personality Marieke Hardy, when she erroneously identified Joshua Meggitt as the author behind the ‘hate blog’ mariekehardy.blogspot.com, which was dedicated to, well, hating Hardy. [Note: The general difference between slander and libel is that slander is spoken, libel is written – so Hardy’s was a libelous Tweet, not a slanderous Tweet. Both slander and libel are defamation.]

Hardy’s defamatory Tweet stated “I name and shame my ‘anonymous’ internet bully. Liberating business! Join me.” The Tweet included a link to a post on her blog where she mis-identified Meggitt as the person behind mariekehardy.blogspot.com.

Meggitt and Hardy have since settled the matter out of court, and Hardy has publicly apologized to Meggitt on her blog, but Meggitt is now suing Twitter as the conduit through which the greatest damage was done.

You see, Hardy’s Tweet was re-tweeted by over 60,000 of her Twitter followers.

Explains Meggitt’s lawyer, Stuart Gibson, “Twitter are a publisher, and at law anyone involved in the publication can be sued. We’re suing for the retweets and the original tweet – and many of the retweets and comments are far worse.”

It will be very interesting to see where this goes.