"Cache" is King in On-line Defamation Cases
I posted yesterday about Steven Tyler's lawsuit against anonymous bloggers. You can read that post here. I thought about the case some more and a particular thought jumped out at me. According to the complaint, Tyler's attorney sent a letter to Google asking them to remove the blogs, which Google did. The complaint goes on, "[a]pparently defiant and intent on infringing upon Plaintiff's rights, they have reappeared." Now, if Google removed the blogs how could they have reappeared? Well, the answer is likely that Google created a "Cached" copy of the blog. What is a Cache? Well, "Google takes a snapshot of each page it examines and caches (stores) that version as a back-up." Why is this important, you say? To those of you who are currently being defamed, or lawyers who are representing parties that are the victims of internet libel, you must ask the other party (or counsel) to remove the cached copies of the alleged defamatory website. If you don't, you may end up being sued like the bloggers in the Tyler lawsuit, or being sued for malpractice.
