When I first thought about starting a blog to review books I almost didn't because of the behavior of some
authors against bloggers.
A Canadian prosecutor won $ 50,000 in a defamation
lawsuit against a blogger who wrote that he «grows and uses marijuana, uses cocaine, has misappropriated funds, been disbarred..., has breached the public trust and misused his office and is a dishonest and despicable person.»
When I first read about the death
threats against blogger Kathy Sierra, I immediately wondered how the legal blogosphere might respond.
A few years ago, a Canadian court ruled
against a blogger who accused a law student of lying to the Ontario Human Rights Commission and supporting extremist violence.
But now, as Professor Bainbridge and many other bloggers report, another law firm, this time Nashville firm King and Barlow, has drawn the ire of other bloggers for threatening a libel
action against blogger Kat Coble unless she removes something that offended one of the firm's clients.
As the New York Times reported earlier this week, publisher and conference promoter O'Reilly proposed the code in the wake of death threats
against blogger Kathy Sierra.
In addition to being a classic case of biting the hand that feeds you, Martha's
tirade against bloggers thrust the genre of food and craft blogs into the blogger vs. journalist debate.
On Monday morning in USA Today I argued,
against bloggers like Beliefnet's Rod Dreher, that the religious commitments of judges matter.
The general criticism
leveled against bloggers went along the lines of, «How dare these amateurs fancy themselves as writers.»
These threats range from copyright infringement lawsuits
filed against bloggers to cease and desist letters claiming defamation sent to MySpace users.
At Citizen Media Law, Andrew Moshirnia reports on a defamation lawsuit filed by a northern Illinois
newspaper against a blogger: «That's right, a newspaper (the Jeffersonian protectors of democracy) and a blogger (saving the world one lolcat at a time) are duking it out, each trying to out chill the other's speech.»
Geist says there are likely to be more lawsuits
against bloggers as blogs become more mainstream.
Multi-level marketer LuLaRoe (LLR, Inc. and LulaRoe, LLC) filed a lawsuit this
week against blogger Christina Hinks, better known as Mommygyver.
«User Community and ROI Main Death
threats against bloggers are NOT «protected speech» (why I cancelled my ETech presentations)»
Has someone installed a hair trigger on libel lawsuits
against bloggers?
In June a jury awarded my uOttawa colleague Professor Joanne St. Lewis a stunning $ 350,000 verdict in her defamation lawsuit
against blogger and former University of Ottawa professor Denis Rancourt.
The database contains legal threats ranging from copyright infringement lawsuits
against bloggers to cease and desist letters claiming defamation against MySpace users.
Elsewhere, Dan Kennedy's blog Media Nation reports on another questionable lawsuit
against a blogger, this one against Cape Cod resident Peter Robbins, author of the blog Robbins Report.