You can libel a porn star with a photo, according to a federal appeals court, which has allowed a libel suit by internet pornography pioneer Danni Ashe to go forward. That decision in her case -- against an online tabloid that published an article about another porn actress who tested HIV-positive and illustrated it with an unrelated photograph of Ashe -- has important First Amendment implications.
For a public figure to win a libel suit, she needs to prove that the writer knowingly published falsehoods with "actual malice" (either with the knowledge that a statement was false or "with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not"). The decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit said that could be achieved by implication -- and that reckless publication could amount to malice. Taken together, the two parts of the holding threaten internet free speech in the era of widely available stock photos.
