A federal judge has recently allowed an ongoing libel lawsuit filed against a popular online forum to go forward.

Bleeping Computer, the website, has characterized the lawsuit as "frivolous," and has asked its readers to help defend its "freedom of speech."

The case revolves around numerous posts on the site concerning Enigma Software Group, which makes an anti-virus software known as SpyHunter.

Those messages stem primarily from a September 2014 post, during which one of Bleeping’s moderators, “Quietman7,” wrote:

While there are mixed reviews for SpyHunter, some good and some bad, my main concern is the reports by customers of deceptive pricing, continued demands for payment after requesting a refund, lack of adequate customer support, removal (uninstall) problems and various other issues with their computer as a result of using this product.

Further posts described ESG as engaging in “deceptive pricing” and claimed that SpyHunter is a “dubious and ineffective program.”

As a result, ESG sued Bleeping Computer for libel in January 2016, seeking at least $75,000 in damages.

In late February 2016, Bleeping Computer filed a motion to dismiss in an attempt to get the case thrown out, and it has appealed to its readers for help with its legal defense fund, calling the lawsuit “frivolous.” (As of this writing, it has raised over $109,000, including $5,000 from Malwarebytes, a rival anti-virus firm, which advertises on Bleeping Computer.)

"We feel confident that we should prevail on summary judgment and our position is that the allegations in the complaint are false and that will come out in the course of the litigation," Gregory W. Herbert, Bleeping Computer's attorney, told Ars.

"The statements at issue are either true or are protected opinions. This case is clearly about nothing other than censorship and trying to silence a critic."

A fine line indeed

ESG seems to be very sensitive to criticism.

As CSO noted, in 2007, the company sent cease-and-desist letters to other rival anti-virus firms, including Symantec and Kaspersky, which had flagged SpyHunter as malware. The next year, a company vice president told someone writing on ComplaintsBoard.com who indeed had negative things to say about the software that "there is a fine line between freedom of speech and libel defamation."

More recently, Bleeping said it tried to play nice before filing the suit.

"ESG filed suit against Bleeping Computer because Bleeping Computer is misleading the public and harming fair competition in the marketplace," ESG spokesperson Ryan Gerding wrote in a February 2016 statement. "The company wrote to Bleeping Computer before filing suit and asked them to stop, but they refused."

In its April 2016 motion to dismiss, lawyers representing Bleeping made a series of arguments, it claimed that the site has immunity under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects sites from liability by third-party speakers on its platform; that the original post was published beyond the statute of limitations; and that Quietman7's speech was plainly opinion, and thus, protected.

However, the judge disagreed. In a 51-page order and opinion issued last week, US District Judge Paul Engelmayer wrote that while Quietman7 sometimes qualified his statements as opinion: “such allegations…could reasonably be understood as assertions of objectively verifiable facts.”

Lawyers for ESG did not immediately respond to Ars’ request for comment.