WebProNews » libel

Fake Steve Outed As Forbes’ Daniel Lyons

WebProNews Staff — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 00:17:56 +0000

Remember Daniel Lyons, the guy who lambasted the blogosphere in a notorious October 2005 hit piece for Forbes? He’s been revealed as the voice of the Fake Steve Jobs blog.

Fake Steve Outed As Forbes’ Daniel Lyons

I’m pretty sure no one in the blogging world suspected Lyons of taking up the ol’ Blogspot editor and cranking out the Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, also known as Fake Steve Jobs or FSJ. But the New York Times put two and two together and added them up to “platform of an online lynch mob, spouting liberty but spewing lies, libel, and invective.”

Lyons recently updated the FSJ blog to confirm the findings by the Times and reporter Brad Stone:

Now you’ve ruined the mystery of Fake Steve, robbing thousands of people around the world of their sense of childlike wonder. Hope you feel good about yourself, you mangina. One bright side is that at least I was busted by the Times and not Valleywag. I really, really enjoyed seeing those guys keep guessing wrong.

Meanwhile, the Times described how the old world of print media, clued in by the forthcoming FSJ book, managed to dredge up a secret that had been the cause of much speculation for about 14 months:

The book, in part, led to Mr. Lyons

Google Needs K Street View Of DC

WebProNews Staff — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 11:31:32 +0000

The growing scrutiny of the company’s stated aim to organize all the world’s information, and its more prosaic acquisition of DoubleClick, means Google has to pay more attention to Washington’s K Street lobbying practices.

Google Needs K Street View Of DC

Navigating the unfriendly streets of DC by car will lead the first-time driver to encounter the city’s challenging traffic circles. These were designed at a time when the horse and buggy were the transportation method of choice.

You can’t lose your head when trying to merge a very modern auto with the high-speed traffic flying around them. Google has encountered its traffic circle in DC in the form of lawmakers and regulatory agencies, and those are nearly as lethal to a relatively free-wheeling tech company as the real ones are for drivers.

Google will have permanent digs in the Capitol in October, according to a Bloomberg report on the company’s plans. The political reality of Washington has set in for Google; tribute must be paid to lawmakers, in the form of lobbying.

Analyst Blair Levin of Stifel Nicolaus said in the report that Google’s relationship with Washington could have a long-term impact on its stock. He noted the reality of how the company may have to make the occasional deal with the devil to get what it wants:

Tradeoffs that are routine in Washington — making a concession on one issue to win on another — may prove difficult for Google, Levin said. A company will typically lend support to a lawmaker who backs one of its initiatives, even after finding the official’s views on other items “abhorrent,” he said.

“Google has a certain kind of uncompromising sensibility that will be tested in this context,” Levin said.

Al Gore’s pal Eric Schmidt may not like the idea of playing nice with a Republican Senator on a key committee. Lobbyists may have to tell him to suck it up and deal with it. Washington politics is anything but a carefree ride around the Googleplex on a bike.

Canadian Sues The Messenger

Mike Sachoff — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 22:29:56 +0000

Wayne Crookes, a former campaign manager of the Green Party of Canada, is suing Google, Wikipedia and openpolitics.ca for libel. He is suing the sites for posting made by anonymous users on Google’s Blogspot, for an entry under his name on Wikipedia, and on openpolitics.ca, a political forum run by Michael Pilling a Green Party activist.

Canadian Sues The Messenger

"I resent very much irresponsible statements made very recklessly. I’m determined that the people who have acted so irresponsibly will find that there are consequences," Mr. Crookes said.

"I hope that the outcome is that people will realize they have obligations and that they will be forced to accept responsibility for their actions. The larger the organization, the greater the expectation that they will be held accountable for their actions."

In the U.S. the Communications Decency Act protects service providers from being held liable for what their users say. In Canada the situation is more complex because there is no clear law when it comes to libel and Internet defamation.

Mr.Pilling said he plans to defend himself in the case and understands why Mr.Crookes is taking legal action. "It is a case that could potentially go all the way to the Supreme Court because there is very little on the books in Canadian case law with respect to libel and Internet defamation," he said.

He went on to point out that as operator of the siteopenpolitics.ca, that he is being held responsible for edits that were made by others who were either registered users or anonymous users.

He added that even though the pages were removed that he is still being held liable.

Dermod Travis, a spokesman for Mr. Crookes, said the defendants did not respond appropriately when they were told they had crossed a line.

While libel is a serious matter taking this kind of legal action will raise plenty of eyebrows and invite more public scrutiny of Mr.Crookes character and reputation.

Courts Becoming Busy With Blog Lawsuits

WebProNews Staff — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 18:33:59 +0000

March was a busy month for lawsuits involving bloggers and webmasters. The court system taking them to task for defamatory statements, with one case becoming the first to go to trial and result in a liability verdict.

A legal system once tentative about taking on digital cases is braving the waters with more frequency. Most of the cases we’ve reported on have involved the statements of anonymous commentators, liability for which webmasters and bloggers have been repeatedly exonerated (or are expected to be). But these are different.

Banks v. Milum – Georgia

"Rafe Banks will never make one single move against me or this website because he knows that we have the witnesses to prove that he carried these drug dealer payoffs to [a] judge."

Those are the now famous last words of David Milum, of Forsyth County, Georgia, who owes Mr. Banks, Milum’s former attorney, $50,000 in compensatory damages. The first case the Media Law Resource Center is aware of that has actually saddled a webmaster with liability.

Milum was disappointed (to put it lightly) with Banks’ handling of his DUI case and fired Banks. When Banks refused to pay back the $3,000 retainer, Milum repeatedly accused Banks of bribing judges on behalf of drug dealers.

Milum couldn’t produce the witnesses he mentioned above.

Barrett-Jackson Auction Company, LLC v. ThumbCo – Arizona

David Clabuesch, a Michigan judge, was hoping his 1970 Hemi Barracuda would fetch upwards of a million dollars at an Arizona muscle car auction. When the car sold for just $300,000, Clabuesch wasn’t happy.

When I say he wasn’t happy, I mean that he chained the wheels after the auction, put up a sign that saying the sale was void, and accused the auctioneer of quick-gaveling the sale.

Though Clabeusch didn’t actually post anything on line (from what I gather), chat rooms and blogs had a field day talking about the auction. As such, Phoenix-based Barrett-Jackson sued Clabeusch on the grounds that his claims were damaging the company’s reputation.

Judge Clabuesch is preparing a lawsuit of his own.

Yoon v. Carney – California

ACLU activist Joanne Yoon’s job was, basically, to keep a close eye on the San Diego Minutemen while they held their rallies. The San Diego Minutemen don’t like her much. In fact, they’re kind of mean.

Through mass-circulated emails and blog posts, members of the Minutemen group, who’ve taken the responsibility upon themselves to monitor the US’s border with Mexico, called Yoon an "anorexic ACLU slut" and "a skank" who sleeps with "those little brown Border Hoppers" daily.

If untrue, those statements jump the line of opinion, and land square in the realm of libel.

Google Asked To Reveal Blogger Identity

WebProNews Staff — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 18:38:05 +0000

Another anonymous blogger is in the defamation hot seat after anonymous commentators labeled a local school board member a "bigot," an "anit-Semite," and even "ugly." The target of those words didn’t take kindly to them and is demanding that Google reveal both the identity of the blogger and the commentators.

Google Asked To Reveal Blogger Identity

And Google says they’ll do it, too, if the court says so, at a cost to the petitioner of $75 per hour. "Orthomom," the blogger in question, has until April 5 to file an objection.

The full details of this case are not so interesting – it’s a local school board cat fight. As the son of two public school teachers, I can speak from experience that these things, more often than not, devolve into bloodthirsty, political cheap shots. So I’ll spare you the background.

But the case again brings up the important question of what constitutes libel, the limits of free expression, and the right of anonymity. More specifically, it addresses these issues as they pertain to blogs, forums, social networks, and websites.

An important fact up front is that Orthomom made none of the questionable comments. Yet, Pamela Greenbaum, the offended school board member is seeking to have her identity revealed as well, in order to file a defamation lawsuit.

Greenbaum is petitioning Google to release data and/or printouts identifying the person responsible for the blog, including registration records, renewal, and IP addresses, and also data identifying the person(s) attributed to "Anonymous."

On January 11, 2007, following a heated local debate involving public and private schools, some of the Long Island Orthodox Jewish community, 300,000 of which it is claimed follow Orthomom’s blog, began hurling insults directed at Greenbaum.

These insults included anonymous statements like:

_{Pam Greenbaum is a bigot and really should not be on the board.}

greenbaum is not to be believed

If history is a guide, She will make it a dirty campaign, so be prepared.

Pam Greenbaum, refusing to ever agree with an Orthodox Jew, now opposes protecting children.

Orthomom and her attorney have put forth a few arguments against Greenbaum’s demands, not the least of which is that Orthomom herself never made the comments, and that, as a provider of an online forum, she is protected from actionable third-party comments by the oft-cited Section 230 of the US Code.

In a subsequent blogpost, Orthomom defends herself this way:

The bottom line is that an anonymous commenter calling someone a "bigot’ in an an anonymous forum is simply not defamatory… The statement is clearly one of opinion, not fact, and it is further tempered by the fact that an anonymous commenter is not considered a credible source by the vast majority of readers.

In addition, the bar is even higher to prove a statement as defamatory when one takes into account that Ms. Greenbaum is a public official, as the commenter would have had to show malice – which is legally defined as "falsity or reckless disregard of the truth".

And it’s difficult to prove malice, if the statement is an opinion, which everyone, in the US at least, is entitled to. For precedent, let’s look at an opinion statement as it has been questioned in the past. There are a number of words to examine, like "ugly" or "racist," but the host of the blog Krum As A Bagel wins the prize for libel research with a legal explanation of "dumb ass":

A statement that the plaintiff is a "Dumb Ass," even first among "Dumb Asses," communicates no factual proposition susceptible of proof or refutation… depending on context, it may convey a lack less of objectively assayable mental function than of such imponderable and debatable virtues as judgment or wisdom.

Here defendant did not use "dumb" in isolation, but as part of the idiomatic phrase, "dumb ass." When applied to a whole human being, the term "ass" is a general expression of contempt essentially devoid of factual content. Adding the word "dumb" merely converts "contemptible person" to "contemptible fool."

Plaintiffs were justifiably insulted by this epithet, but they failed entirely to show how it could be found to convey a provable factual proposition. … If the meaning conveyed cannot by its nature be proved false, it cannot support a libel claim.

So yes, you can, legally call someone a dumb ass, or pretty much any other vague insult.

Paul Alan Levy, attorney for Orthomom, probably says it best though, as he pushes for dismissal (which most seem to think is likely):

The right to criticize anonymously on the Internet is a fundamental free speech right and an important tool for whistleblowers and consumers who speak out about the misconduct or corruption of big companies or public figures.

Those who want to intimidate their critics with the threat of identification, but who have no real basis for suing, should learn from this case that they cannot file suit and then expect to withdraw if the critics are ready to fight back. Companies and powerful individuals who try this trick should be prepared for the financial consequences.

Which, I take to mean, there will be a countersuit. Should be interesting to watch.

Online Libel Suits

Dustin Brewer — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 17:07:33 +0000

t looks like the Supreme Court has ruled protection over online libel suits.

This means that if you post malicious or defaming information or write something of that nature about someone online that you can not be sued for it. Only the source of the defaming information can be at fault. For example, if someone in my comments posts something bad about George Bush I won’t get in trouble but the source could be tracked down and sued for defamation. Granted, that is an extreme case.

This move will help help to protect the freedom of speech online as well as ensure that companies like Amazon, AOL and Yahoo don’t get sued for libel for pointless things that they have no control over. It also protects blogger who reposts information that they received from a source or information they obtained by other means. They can’t directly be sued unless they are the direct source of the malicious information.

The decision was made in California Supreme Court and decided in the case of Rosenthal who was being sued for posting a piece to two newsgroups about a doctor and the defamation of his character through supposed health frauds. The lawsuit accuses Rosenthal of republishing the information after being warned it was untrue and defamatory. In reversing an appellate court’s decision, the state Supreme Court ruled that the Communications Decency Act of 1996 provides broad immunity from defamation lawsuits for people who publish information on the Internet that was gathered from another source.

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Dustin Brewer is a web and graphic designer with a passionate interest
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Bloggers Protected From Others Libel

Andy Beal — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 20:48:09 +0000

A California court has just ruled that bloggers and forum owners cannot be sued for defamatory statements made by others. (pdf of ruling).

the court said, “Until Congress chooses to revise the settled law in this area” people who contend they were defamed on the Internet can seek recovery only from the original source of the statement, not from those who re-post it.”

Bloggers are still liable for their own defamatory comments, but we now know that if someone leaves a comment on a blog about a certain crap SEO firm, the blog owner can’t be sued.

Hat-tip WMW.

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Andy Beal is an internet marketing consultant and considered one of the world’s most respected and interactive search engine marketing experts. Andy has worked with many Fortune 1000 companies such as Motorola, CitiFinancial, Lowes, Alaska Air, DeWALT, NBC and Experian.

You can read his internet marketing blog at Marketing Pilgrim and reach him at andy.beal@gmail.com.

Lawsuit Against Maine Blogger Dropped

WebProNews Staff — Thu, 11 May 2006 22:28:35 +0000

Blogger Lance Dutson earned a victory against Warren Kremer Paino Advertising as the ad agency dropped its lawsuit against the web developer who criticized their business with the state of Maine.

Maine’s tourism department received visitors of another sort: angry bloggers who wrote at length reviling Warren Kremer Paino for its litigation against Dutson and his attacks on what he perceived as wasteful spending by the state with the agency.

Dutson faced copyright infringement, defamation and trade libel charges from the agency. He had placed a copy of an ad created by Warren Kremer Paino for the tourism office on his blog.

That ad contained a phone number that proved to be one for a phone sex operation. Dutson obtained the image from the state’s website, where it is still publicly available for download as part of a PowerPoint presentation.

Attorneys for Warren Kremer Paino withdrew the suit “without prejudice,” the Concord Monitor reported, so if the agency choose to it could refile the suit again.

A Maine representative, Stephen Bowen, had called upon Governor John Baldacci to suspend its dealings with Warren Kremer Paino. The Lincoln County News reported how Jack Cashman, Maine’s commissioner of Economic and Community Development, urged Warren Kremer Paino to drop the suit.

Bowen likely felt the impact of all the blogger attention as well. His district contains Camden, the home to the annual Pop!Tech conference. High-profile bloggers like TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington and Microsoft’s Robert Scoble both expressed reluctance to attend the October event in response to the lawsuit.

“This is no longer a policy disagreement. It’s no longer a suit. It’s reflecting poorly on the stateand doing potential harm to my district,” Bowen said ahead of the suit’s dismissal. “The people who come to PopTech are precisely the people we want here.”

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PR’s Killer App

Jeremy Pepper — Thu, 04 May 2006 20:34:17 +0000

This past weekend, I did something that most normal people do. I met up with some people for a little soiree, then went out to some bars.

They weren’t Web 2.0 people. They weren’t bloggers. They had no idea that they were in the presence of Internet famous PR hottitude (go vote for me ), according to ValleyWag. They were PR people, though. Well, some of them were, and others were just normal people with normal jobs, or even online marketers that just don’t care about blogs as they see the click-through value for ad buys.

So, one asked me what I do at the firm. I noted that I am a PR person that specializes in blogging – note that emphasis, as I will get back to it later.

His comment was that blogs are a fad that are going to be killed by lawsuits. Which, well, might be true. Hell, I wrote about the issue of blogs and libel so long ago, I forget what I wrote. And, well, the Maine case makes me seem prescient.

Recently, though, Daniel Bernstein of Bite PR wrote that the killer app of PR is blogging and needs to be handled by the senior counselors of public relations. And, well, he got slammed by some top bloggers – David Parmet wraps it up quite well in a couple of posts, including fisking Bernstein’s response – and Bernstein did an okay job defending against the rabid fans of PR blogging.

It’s wrong though. Yes, blogs are an important part of PR, and will continue to be. And, blogs are giving way to vlogs (check the SF article) which are an even better form of viral communications. And, while I love being known as a go-to guy for understanding blogs at work, at the end of the day, I am a PR person that has a blogging specialty.

In my pundit post (yes, the Wings ran into a hot goalie), Kami Huyse and Mike Sacks both posted good points and questions. Huyse noted that she disagreed that blogging is going to be its own separate practice area, but that it is important to have the other skills as well. Sacks noted that blogging is not complex enough to have its own practice group, and that the strategy is pretty simple.

Well, they are both right and wrong, but I can agree with their points. Blogging does not need its own separate practice area because it is merely another avenue for media relations. Yes, it’s different than straight media relations, but it is about building relationships with bloggers and being smart. This is something that all PR people should have. And, while blogging and consumer generated media seems simple, it is so fraught with land mines it is never simple strategy, but more complex than straight media. It’s a mix of guerilla and word of mouth and relationship building … with a light hand. But, does that mean it needs it’s own separate practice area? Nope.

That’s what I mean by PR person with blog specialty. It’s what we should all be – a generalist with skills in a wide range of PR practices. We should all be able to pick up the phone (yes, the phone) and pitch a reporter. We should all be able to email a blogger and smartly reach out to them. We should all be able to write a tactical and strategic plan for a client. It’s all the skills together.

And, that is what matters. The killer app in public relations is not blogging, nor media relations, nor guerrilla marketing, nor word of mouth campaigns. The killer app in PR is counsel and strategy, a part of PR that has gone missing, and a big reason we lost the seat at C-suite table (well, this is my belief). Yes, I have written in the past about that marketing and communications are coming to a convergence, but the seat at the table is more marketing than communications.

Well, we should take it back. The seat should be communications because we tend to be more transparent than other disciplines, because we are at the front lines of public relations (remember, that the P stands for public, not press). We see what is happening – and see it faster because of blogs and CGM – and we know how to react and be smart about it.

The PR seat at the C-suite table should be agencies and people that can think strategically and tactically, understand the new media landscape that is both CGM and mainstream, and be able to talk to all groups. The killer app in PR is the skills we should have – but lost along the way – that we need to find again to push us forward in marketing communications.

Then, we can leave the kiddies table and join the C-suite adults.

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Jeremy Pepper is the CEO and founder of POP! Public Relations, a public relations firm based in Arizona, USA.
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FT: ‘Tolerate Some Libel for the Greater Good’

Neville Hobson — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 20:15:03 +0000

There has been much written in recent weeks concerning the character assassination of John Seigenthaler over his biography in Wikipedia, prompting much discussion over the trustworthiness of an open information resource like Wikipedia which anybody can edit.

The character assassin was outed and Wikipedia is now implementing tighter controls over who can edit material.

The Financial Times has a report that includes a recap of the Siegenthaler affair, and looks at it from the libel point of view. The FT says that under the laws of the internet, Wikipedia cannot be held liable for any mistakes, even defamatory ones, because it is merely hosting other people’s speech which, the FT says, gives it immunity under the 1996 Communications Decency Act in the US.

Individual contributors are liable for what they say online, says the FT, but internet privacy laws make it hard to connect the address of the computer used to post the entry with the name and address of the real human being who typed it.

And the FT says this:

[...] But there is no easy solution to the problem highlighted by the Seigenthaler episode. On one level, it is a welcome reminder that no one should rely on Wikipedia without double-checking its facts through another source. That is easy enough to do, says Wikipedia’s chief legal officer, Jean-Baptiste Soufron. “Just Google it!” he says. And stung by the criticism, the Wiki itself is looking for ways to improve accuracy, including an online rating system that will be tested in the new year.

Politicians may be tempted to react to the incident with stricter regulation – especially if their own biographies are mutilated during next year’s elections, says Mr Seigenthaler. But there are great risks in doing so, says Mr Soufron: without immunity “there would be no Wikipedia – but there would also be no chat rooms, no internet at all”. Professor Ezor [director of the Institute for Business, Law and Technology at Touro Law Centre, New York State] agrees: “Every blogger who allows people to comment would also be at risk.”

The defamed deserve redress – but not at the cost of crippling the interactive potential of the internet. It is worth tolerating a little bit of libel, for the greater good.
The bold text is my emphasis.

My question is simply – what price freedom of speech? The FT has a thought-provoking report and a controversial idea, sure to create continuing debate.

Financial Times | Allow libel to slip through the net (paid sub)

Neville Hobson is the author of the popular NevilleHobson.com blog which focuses on business communication and technology.
Neville is currentlly the VP of New Marketing at Crayon. Visit Neville Hobson’s blog: NevilleHobson.com.