Libel threat to user tagging sites?

Tagging sites, like del.icio.us and furl (bookmark sharing) and flickr (for digital photo sharing), are rapidly becoming the new-new thing of the internet world.

For the uninitiated, these sites allow users to "tag" content with keywords, making it easier for others to find the content they are looking for. So, for example, I’ve recently posted a photo of the London Eye, looking towards the Houses of Parliament, on flickr and tagged this with London Eye, Parliament, Thames, Big Ben, and Embankment. Users searching flickr using any of these tags could find my photo.

One problem with user tagging is that different people approach the same subject from vastly different points of reference – as they always say, "one man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist".

Most Londoners looking at my photo of the London Eye will know that, just outside the frame of this photo, is the very large HQ building of a multi-national oil corporation. Had I posted a photo of that particular building, and tagged it with "Environmental Terrorists" or "Murderers", could I be successfully prosecuted for libel? Could the site be prosecuted for libel??

Certainly having a negative tag associated with your name, brand, website, photo, etc could be damaging to your reputation so, on the surface of things at least, it would appear possible that user tagging could give rise to a libel case.

So is this pitfall of user tagging merely a thorn in the side or a cruise missle looking for a target?

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12 March ’05: Someone emailed me about this entry and got me curious about what I’d find if I did type some potentially libellous keywords into flickr. I think this particular photo, found under the tag "rapist", illustrates the point of this blog entry well.