Mar 19 2008
Back in November, I let you know about a ridiculous lawsuit regarding the iBrattleboro community website being sued for libel due to some comments that someone posted on the site. Well, there’s some great news today. The suit has been thrown out (h/t to Brattlerouser at GMD). You can read about it at iBrat, and there’s a bit of good commentary by odum over at GMD, as well. Many congrats to Chris and Lise of iBrat.
Dec 22 2007
Bill Simmon over at Candleblog has chimed in on the recent Seven Days piece that featured a few comments from yours truly. He doesn’t agree with the overall tone of the piece, namely its implication that the reason the editorials in the papers came out supportive of the suit is stemmed in “new media/old media” jealousy. Rather:
The real tension, I think, is between bloggers, who get the internet, and newspaper editors, who generally don’t. Every opinion I’ve seen expressed that supports iBrattleboro being named in the libel suit seems to miss the fundamental differences between blog comments and letters to the editor in newspapers. Perhaps more importantly, they miss the fact that this is very covered ground. Blogging is still fairly new to Vermont but online unmoderated forums are not that new to the legal system. That the relevant case law that’s being debated is eleven years old is telling.
I’m inclined to agree with him on that.
Dec 13 2007
The new issue has an article by Patrick Ripley that covers the recent iBrattleboro libel story that’s been all the buzz lately. The coverage is a bit different from the others in that it also discusses the some of the VT blogosphere’s reaction to the suit, which was decidedly different from that of the Reformer and the Argus. The newspapers were quite supportive of the claim against IBrattleboro. And of course, there’s that “old media vs. new media” vibe that runs through the whole discussion at length in the pice. And it mentions a few familiar names, as well. Have a read.
Nov 28 2007
Those of you that are blog addicts are well aware of the issue of a blog’s liability as well as “ownership” of comments, whether it be if a blog’s owner is legally responsible for the content in the comments section, or it be Bill O’Reilly bloviating about the worst comments in a section and trying to paint the whole blog as extreme as those comments. Apparently, the concept of trying to silence a blog by going after the owners is still a fresh one, as the owners of the community blog iBrattleboro (Brattleboro, VT) are now being sued for libel, over some comments that someone posted there. Go below the jump for more.
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