The Rapidity of Technological Change
A further argument in favor of applying traditional defamation laws rather than attempting to rewrite them specifically for the Internet is the rapid pace of technological development. Because the Internet is a technology which is constantly evolving, any laws made which were specific to it could easily become outdated almost immediately. Traditional laws, by contrast, offer principles which are consistent regardless of technological change and as such can be applied to new technologies as easily as to those currently existing. At the present time, legal precedents are not numerous enough to completely define how those laws are to be applied to the current technology, but those precedents which exist do show that the courts are able to successfully apply traditional laws to specific instances involving new media. It is this ability which will allow the law to remain current regardless of technological change, while the bulk of new Internet-specific legislation could not possibly hope to do so.
However, in keeping with the spirit of the open, free, unrestricted Internet, and in recognizing that the Internet does have attributes that make it unique, we advocate simple recommendations towards uniformity, and "picking and choosing" the most appropriate that the state-by-state defmataion codes have to offer. For instance, states like Wisconsin mandate that the plaintiff of a potential libel claim against a newspaper, magazine, or publisher must first ask for and be denied a retraction of the libelous claim. In our perfect world, we see this as an ideal requirement for Internet-based defamation suits. Because the Internet by definition allows for immediate publication and dissemination of ideas, it allows not only point-by-point refutation by the maligned party of potentially libelous claims, but it seems the ideal forum for this "retraction" policy as a "first step" before pursuing a libel or other sort of defamation claim through the well-established existing legal channels. So, though on the whole our position would be to be wary of initiating Internet-specific regulation and sui generis rules for "cyberlibel" as opposed to "real-world" libel, we acknowledge that there are these kinds nuances and options which ought to be considered.