Blogger beware: Postings can lead to lawsuits | Hacker News Reader

Blogger beware: Postings can lead to lawsuits

latimes.com

10 pointsHalienja11 comments

Lots of things can lead to lawsuits. Especially in a climate where reason and live-and-let-live have been replaced by litigation. It wasn't always like that, but then again we didn't always have this many lawyers.

I have received on average at least one threat of a lawsuit per month since roughly 1998, which is when we started getting a little larger online. As a rule these threats come from the United States, and equally predictable once I outline the legal situation to them they change their tone and become polite and reasonable individuals.

I think that for bloggers the same holds, simply add an international component to your situation and the cost of 'because I can' legislation goes up so much that you might end up resolving things amicably instead of through the courts.

I also have a rule that anybody that does not want to be reasonable has to sue me, that is, they actually have to follow through on their threat. To date that hasn't happened.

So most of this is all bark and very little bite, but I'm sure that it is possible to be sued for blogging or operating any other web property, it just hasn't happened to me yet. If you go out of your way to slander or libel someone then of course you're just as culpable as you would be 'in real life', after all the web is an extension of real life.

Just like lots of other activities can get you sued. Just be a bit more careful when you criticize someone in print than you would be if you spoke out loud, that should take care of most of it. 'It is my opinion' goes a long way towards solving most of this.

"I also have a rule that anybody that does not want to be reasonable has to sue me"

That might work with the average Joe or the guy in his basement, but a public figure might, knowing that he vastly out powers you in terms of law expertise, follow through. So too a company. That is, if they actually have any basis for it. You can not be sued for opinions, but you need to make it clear that they are opinions, and you can not be sued for saying the truth. If you blatantly defame someone however, again the average Joe might not want to go through the hassle as he would have to pay lawyers, but some other person would have no reason to hesitate. So if you defame someone, just offer them to amend it, if however they are making threats without any base at all, then yeah sure stick with your rule.

> That is, if they actually have any basis for it.

That's the key though.

And in the very large majority of the cases it seems that threatening to sue are a modern day equivalent of baring your teeth. And just like in the animal kingdom, most of the time, showing that you have teeth too, and presumably bigger ones will cause the other party to back down.

Of course you have to weigh your position carefully, but even corporations have backed down when faced with the prospect of someone that would not be scared by this. And in those cases where I threatened to sue and the other party did not back down I followed through each and every time, haven't lost a single case to date.

It all depends on what is at stake and how much of it is simply kneejerk responses. A very large portion of all this is just bluster and threat display, most of the times there are reasonable people underneath the angry facade, and if they realize that their facade has been punctured quite often the reasonable person emerges.

Those times where I sued the business interests warranted the investment in legal fees and the damages recovered in turn covered those fees. If that would not have been the case I would have let it slide, otherwise you're just throwing good money after bad.

I think it's not the worst idea in the world to hold people accountable for what they say. On the other hand, the legal system in most of these cases seems to serve not for the better purpose. It basically ruins people's lives and makes them spend their money to defend themselves in courts over accusations that may not pass the common sense check. Not good for economy.

Ianal, but isn't there some system in place to prevent really ridiculous cases going to court? E.g. grand juries or something?

> Ianal, but isn't there some system in place to prevent really ridiculous cases going to court? E.g. grand juries or something?

Grand juries are "court", albeit with a lesser burden of proof, and they don't apply to civil cases anyway.

There's a preliminary stage, where each party moves for summary judgement in their favor, but even that can get involved. (Google is involved in an age-discrimination lawsuit where the parties are fighting over whether they even go to trial. That decision went to the CA Supreme Court, took years, and cost lots of money. Yes, it's an outlier but....)

The preliminary stage tends to weed out the truly absurd but remember you're only hearing one side here.

It would be an interesting experiment if a blogger adds a small disclaimer: "This is a work of fiction &| gossip" to his "libelous, slanderous" "claims"... Or put every adjective in "quotes" with "some say" at the beginning. This would confuse the lawsuits even further.

Adding "may or may not" to every sentence would also be a good idea.

Most public figures already do something like this when speaking or writing. "Allegedly", is pretty much becoming a salt term for every verb and is well on its way to joining the "most used words in english" right after "the" and "a".

The media might make them seem like they do not pass the common sense check, but judges are people of many years of real life experience and the system of precedents manages to make the law fairly clear.

Also, if a claim is trivial, or pursued regardless of its merits, the claimant might be made to pay punitative damages.

As for the economy, I think it would serve it well if my reputation can be kept intact and not damaged for no reason.

I've always been a bit amazed at how many people think that writing something on the internet is safe, even if they know that writing the same thing in a magazine, or printing it up on flyers and handing them out on the street, would get them in trouble for libel.

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