Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

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 Especially in a climate where reason and live-and-let-live have been replaced by litigation.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.

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