In Firth v. State, the New York Court of Appeals considered the applicability of a statute of limitations to alleged defamation over the Internet. The Court held that the "single publication" rule applies to allegedly defamatory statements posted on a website and that modifications made to a different part of the website do not constitute a re-publication triggering a new limitations period.

Plaintiff, George Firth, a former employee of the Department of Environmental Conservation, was allegedly defamed by a report posted on the Internet by the Office of the State Inspector General. Subsequent to the original posting, the website was modified to add unrelated material from the Department of Motor Vehicles. Plaintiff brought suit more than a year after the original posting of the report, but less than a year after the modification. Plaintiff argued that his claim was not barred by the one-year statute of limitations on a defamation claim because the website modification constituted a new publication of the allegedly defamatory statement.

The Court rejected plaintiff's argument, holding that the "single publication" rule applies to communications accessible over a public website. The "single publication" rule provides that the publication of an allegedly defamatory statement in numerous copies of a widely distributed newspaper or magazine constitutes a single cause of action for statute of limitations purposes. In other words, subsequently distributed issues of the newspaper or magazine do not trigger the running of a new limitations period.

The rationale behind the "single publication" rule, the Court noted, is even more applicable to the Internet, since there is greater potential for endless re-triggering of the statute of limitations as well as a multiplicity of suits and harassment of defendants. Moreover, without the "single publication" rule, there would be an inhibition of ideas and the free flow of information. Thus, the unrelated modification to the website did not qualify as a republication sufficient to restart the one-year statute of limitations. The Court distinguished the situation from the republication of a book, which reaches an entirely new audience. Again, the Court focused on the need for free flow of ideas, citing the possibility that a webmaster might otherwise avoid posting new information on a web page to avoid restarting the statute of limitations.

The case demonstrates that, rather than create a new body of law for the Internet, courts continue to fit Internet legal issues into the established legal framework.