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Suit could break ground in blog law

A case in which a Democratic public
relations consultant is suing a Republican blogger for defamation could become a key test of the First Amendment rights of bloggers.

From the Star-Tribune:

The suit has the potential for breaking new ground on legal issues associated with blogging. While some states' courts have ruled on issues such as anonymous blogging, the territory remains largely uncharted, particularly in the federal courts. While Brodkorb voluntarily revealed himself, some legal experts suggest that federal law would have made it very difficult to unmask him.
Additionally, in a Delaware case last year, the state's Supreme Court ruled that people aggrieved by a blog had the opportunity for redress simply by posting on the offending blog. Political debate, such as that engaged in by Minnesota Democrats Exposed, also is usually afforded the highest form of First Amendment protection by courts, said Jane Kirtley, a professor of media ethics and law at the University of Minnesota.
One result from the Delaware case could be that bloggers may benefit from their own gunslinger reputations, Kirtley said.
"A lot of stuff that appears on blogs, whether it's meant to be or not, is usually not taken by readers as being statements of fact," she said. "Bloggers, by their very nature, are not expected to adhere to the same standards of accuracy that those in the mainstream media would be."

Discussion

1 comments about 'Suit could break ground in blog law'

The suit could break ground, if only to challenge the faulty reasoning in the Delaware Cahill case, to wit:

"Blogs and chat rooms tend to be vehicles for the expression of opinions; by their very nature, they are not a source of facts or data upon which a reasonable person would rely."

Courts (and the public) are going to have to expand their vocabulary that there might be different types of blogs which would thus be judged differently.

Incidentally, in the Cahill decision, the anonymous message board posters (not bloggers) were allowed to stay anonymous. Yet in this case, the plaintiff and the court were able to discover the identity behind minnesotademocratsexposed.com (which I believe is registered via Domains By Proxy) in order to serve the civil suit papers. If one wants to be an anonymous blogger with their own domain, this outing doesn't portend very well.

Posted by Jon Garfunkel at January 8, 2006 1:11 PM

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