Sen. Steve Goss says libel on blogs needs more study.

The Boone Democrat said that he has pulled a bill that would have put civil and criminal penalties on libel published on blogs and other online publications.

Instead, he's asked a Senate committee to substitute a bill that would study the issue to see if future legislation is needed.

The bill drew heated controversy online, especially for its criminal provisions, which Goss said after he filed the bill were unintentional. He added today that bloggers and others pointed out other problems with the wording of the bill.

"I'll be the first to admit when I'm wrong," he said.

He said he's still concerned about the speed of online news and gossip and hopes that a future bill will help resolve some of the problem, though he noted that he views the First Amendment as "sacred."

Fittingly, news of the change surfaced first on Watauga Watch, a blog run by Jerry Williamson in Goss' area.

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The conservative Civitas Institute calls a blog libel bill the "bad bill of the week."

Executive Director Francis De Luca calls an attempt to expand civil and criminal libel laws to cover Internet communication "The Gossip Girl Bill" after the popular TV show in which students anonymously post rumors. 

The negative public reaction to Sen. Goss’ bill was so universal that left-wing and right-wing groups denounced it equally. Basically, SB 46 would treat blogs and electronic communications under different libel and slander criteria from print or news media. It would criminalize and allow lawsuits to be brought against any Web site, blog, forum or newsgroup that posted allegedly false information.

The "bad bill of the week" is a new weekly column by the think tank.

* Clare Giesen, head of the National Women's Political Caucus, will speak to members of the N.C. chapter in Charlotte on Feb. 26.

* Sen. Steve Goss now says he was inspired to write a blog libel bill after reading about the cyberbullying conviction of a Missouri woman.

* Sen. Harry Reid's spokesman says Rep. Heath Shuler's criticism about his "failed" bipartisanship comes from a guy who threw too many interceptions. 

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A civil liberties lawyer says a bill about blog libel is too broadly written.

Matt Zimmerman, an attorney with the pro-civil liberties Electronic Frontier Foundation, said that a proposed Senate bill conflicts with federal law and the U.S. constitution in three major ways:

LIBELOUS COMMENTS. The bill says that administrators of Web sites shall only be held liable for libel posted by third parties, such as a blog comment, if they are negligent. But Zimmerman says the federal Communications Decency Act of 1996 expressly forbids administrators from ever being held liable for third-party comments.

JURISDICTION. The bill covers libelous material "received or viewed" in North Carolina. But Zimmerman said that would effectively put the entire planet under the jurisdiction of the state law, since anything published on the World Wide Web can be seen here. He said that is unconstitutional because it oversteps the state's legal jurisdiction.

CRIMINAL LIBEL. The bill includes criminal penalties for libel, although a sponsor said that was a mistake. Still, Zimmerman said that while criminal libel laws are rarely enforced due to First Amendment concerns, even those that remain on the books require the person to be maliciously or willfully spreading a libelous statement they know is untrue.

Despite his concerns, Zimmerman said that he does not view the underlying rationale for the bill as wrong.

"I don't think there's anything objectionable necessarily about updating a statute to make it clear that libel law extends to online communication," he said.

North Carolina's criminal libel law may never have been used.

A search of the legal database Westlaw turned up only one appellate-level case that cites the 1901 law making it a Class 2 misdemeanor to libel someone.

The 1961 case, Gillikin v. Bell, only mentions the criminal statute in passing, noting that it's irrelevant to the civil complaint under discussion. Westlaw only covers cases in the N.C. Court of Appeals and the state Supreme Court, so it's possible the statute has been used in trial court.

Ashley Perkinson, a First Amendment lawyer with Everett Gaskins Hancock and Stevens in Raleigh, said the criminal libel statute would likely be struck down if it were ever challenged at the appellate level. Her colleagues were not even aware of it.

"This is something that has not come up in our practice," she said.

Since colonial times, libel law in the United States has been a civil matter, not criminal. American common law and First Amendment decisions have held that charging someone with a crime for something they wrote or said is a violation of the First Amendment rights to freedom of expression.

Perkinson said that a recent bill to extend the criminal libel statute to blogs and other electronic communication is "blatantly unconstitutional."

Full Disclosure: Everett Gaskins is the law firm for The News & Observer.

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* Blogger Gordon Smith points out that Sen. Steve Goss' blog libel bill casts a wide net over the Internet and would be retroactive to Dec. 9, 2008.

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Mountain Xpress notes that libel is a criminal offense.

According to the alternative weekly based in Western North Carolina, the state has had a criminal libel law on the books for over a century:

The statute, which has been on the books in some form since 1901, states: "If any person shall state, deliver or transmit by any means whatever, to the manager, editor, publisher or reporter of any newspaper or periodical for publication therein any false and libelous statement concerning any person or corporation, and thereby secure the publication of the same, he shall be guilty of a Class 2 misdemeanor."

The weekly quotes a media law guide that says that only a handful of states have criminal statutes for libel and prosecutions are rare. In the United States, libel has historically been treated as a civil offense.

State Sen. Steve Goss said the inclusion of criminal penalties in a bill targeting libel on blogs was "an oversight."

LONG GONE: The sudden death of longtime Insurance Commissioner Jim Long cast a shadow over the week. Legislators wore red tie stickers in his honor; others gave praise. Ironically, he was going to spend his retirement fighting for stroke prevention.

BILLS BILLS BILLS: Legislators pitched a flurry of new bills to expand sex ed options, extend public financing, teach about the 1898 race riots, require murder interrogations be videotaped, and reduce copays for chiropractors. Leaders will now seek to bury half and rewrite the rest.

SUPER FIGHT: Schools Superintendent June Atkinson threw down her glove. After remaining quiet while Gov. Beverly Perdue sought to pull even more power from her position, Atkinson demanded legislators to decide once and for all who runs the schools.

IN OTHER NEWS: A tough budget year hasn't stopped legislators from asking for more money. As of Thursday, special appropriations bills totaled $95 million, or about 5 percent of the $2 billion shortfall. ... Sen. Kay Hagan wants to limit CEOs getting federal bailout money to the same salary as President Obama. Watch for executives to start arguing the president is underpaid. ... State Sen. Steve Goss said he'd never had any trouble with blogs as he filed a bill that would make them more liable for libel. By the end of the day, bloggers rectified that.

* BlueNC regular Crowbar317 says the bill appears to be designed to remove protection from libel cases for anonymous bloggers and commenters.

* Greensboro News-Record columnist Doug Clark says it would be hard for bloggers to enforce its provisions on anonymous commenters on their own sites.

* WUNC radio reporter Laura Leslie wonders if Sen. Steve Goss is "carrying water" for other legislators, such as Sens. Julia Boseman or R.C. Soles, who have been targeted by blogs.

* Conservative Watauga Watch blog (sarcastically) takes aim at Goss for tackling "paramount public policy concern" of blogging during rough economic time.

* Conservative blogger Jeff Taylor argues that the bill is so broadly written that it could "criminalize virtually all text message traffic;" says N.C. blogs are tame.