The USA Today has a story today about libel lawsuits being filed against authors of weblogs: “Courts are asked to crack down on bloggers, web sites.
Robert Cox, founder and president of the Media Bloggers Association, which has 1,000 members, says the recent wave of lawsuits means that bloggers should bone up on libel law. “It hasn’t happened yet, but soon, there will be a blogger who is successfully sued and who loses his home,” he says. “That will be the shot heard round the blogosphere.”
The article casts as a trend what has always been the case: libel suits are often filed to silence the critic as much as collect the money.
Still, the spread of such suits should remind us all that the basic defense in libel is the truth of the statement - that applies whether you’re a blogger or a publisher.
via Romanesko
on Dec 9th, 2006 at 1:15 pm
[…] As good a time as any to remind us all that libel is libel. Share and Enjoy:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. […]