Slashdot Mirror
Columnist Threatens to Sue Blogger
floppy ears writes "Pseudonymous blogger Atrios has been threatened with a subpoena and lawsuit for defamation. Apparently Atrios used a headline 'Diary of a Stalker' in reference to Donald Luskin. In response to the posting, several anonymous commentators made some allegedly libelous statements about Luskin, and now Luskin has hired an attorney and started making threats and demands. The funniest thing is that Luskin has previously referred to himself as a stalker in his own headline: 'We Stalked. He Balked.'."
Blogging is dying....
do() || do_not();
oh wait...
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
Whereas perhaps 20 people would have read that blog before, now thousands will.
My goodness, now if anyone says anything that makes you look bad, you're gonna sue them.
It reminds me of the Scientology approach: if anyone says anything bad about you, use the courts to silence them. Lovely.
...tizzyd
fascinating that people others want to know their daily rants and raves, what even fascinates me more is the people who read them. Are most bloggers some famed person who has achieved greatness and is willing to give insight into how they do what they do? No, it's bob the mechanic down the hill that repaired a faulty transmission on a '62 Buick the other day who just so happens to have a really cool website with his own personal blog section.
- wash, rinse, repeat.
Is it a sign of the times that those who dissent seem to be attacked by those in power, or has that always been the case?
If I read the blog and the article correctly, this is a case where two guys are throwing mud at each other.Finally one of them couldnt take it anymore and called a lawyer. The only thing that is probably interesting to slashdot is that somebody is not willing to treat blogging equivalent to free speech.
Next article please....
.ACMD setaloiv siht gnidaeR
hundreds will see it before the server is fried. /.
if you don't want people to read something- get it posted on
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
Just hope he is getting sued for blogging, period. That would be justice. Cat pictures alone should get you 3-5 years hard labor.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Um, what the hell are you talking about? As far as political bloggers go, right or left, Atrios is one of the most prolific and well read. But way to go, in typical Slashdot fashion, commenting on something you really know nothing about.
My other computer is your Windows box
Luskin's attacks on Krugman for National Review Online are often rather despicable. I am a conservative, but I can't stand reading Luskin. Besides, Krugman does have some good points. He has been saying that our record deficit (as high a percentage of the GDP as in the Reagan years) is leading to one of three options in the next decade: A) A steep tax hike soon B) A drastic cut in Government programs C) a financial crisis when the market decides that the government is not going to pay them back.
Bush is aiming at B, but he has made no political preparation for it. Nobody is ready to accept drastic cuts in Medicare and Social Security. Without that preparation, we are most likely headed towards C.
Luskin is not a stalker in the legal sense, which is what Krugman implied on national TV. Luskin went to ONE lecture by Krugman.
The controversy of Luskin calling himself a stalker stems from literal and non-literal uses of the word. I find the whole thing nonsense, but any third party who is going to step in and start parroting something like "so and so is a stalker" is only going to get what they are asking for.
Stalking is a serious crime. To accuse someone of it, in the literal sense, is akin to me accusing someone of being a child molester - I'd better have some evidence to back that claim up. I would not expect to NOT be called on it. It's NOT like calling someone an idiot or a jerk.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
I don't know why people do this... they have to realize by now that a libel suit (or any suit) against any kind of media or publishing organization is just free publicity for the defendant. The most unfortunate outcome of this is that babbling fools like Atrios get all the attention while better, more insightful bloggers get tarred with the same stigma of unprofessionalism without any of the benefit of publicity.
--
CPAN rules. - Guido van Rossum
First, a guy gets fired, now a guy gets sued...
Come on people, use your blogs to talk about yourself, or what you like, etc, but don't talk about anyone else, or this is what can happen.
Open Source Java Web Forum with LDAP authentication
Stalking is a felony in many (most) parts of America, so this accusation being made is a serious one. Paul Krugman recently made the charge on Hannity and Colmes, a television program, and Luskin had to go there to defend himself, too. Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from accountability, so I hope they find this guy and hold him accountable.
Paul Krugman is a public figure, being a prominent columnist for the most prominent news paper in the country. If people like Luskin can't challenge public figures without being subject to this kind of abuse, then free speech really is in trouble.
Exactly. Why is this news? If you publish -- in any form -- you are beholden to laws (or in the firing case, beholden to the codes of conduct of your employer) -- and Luskin has the right to bring a course of action here. Whether he prevails or not is up to the courts.
People seem to have high opinions of themselves and their precious egos. Try reading some court decisions about libel and the net - there's a darned high threshold that must be passed for it to be considered libel. Denbeste had a great comment about this - scan down to the entry labelled "Stardate 20031027.0423" to read it.
Oj, yes, the obligatory IANAL, just in case anybody was wondering.
Lemon curry?
It seems as though most of the lawsuits regarding online publication, comments, and so on is the difference between "personal comments" and "news publication."
I may be wrong, but I believe that the fine line between "libel" and "opinion" lies in who's talking, and what they're talking about. If the Local Sunday Times states for a fact that one week ago I was spotted by 100 people dancing naked in a local fountain, and no such event occurred, then I could be sue for libel.
However, if some guy down the street told that to his neighbor - I don't believe I have a leg to stand on. Even if he was on TV and say "Yeah, he was out there doing that", and the news said "Well, that's what Mr. Jones has said", I'm still not sure I could sue either for libel (unless the news organization stated that for a fact - odds are, they'd use the statement "allegedly dancing naked in a fountain."
So what is a blog, or a newsgroup posting then? To most people here, they are "comments", "opinions", things that you take with a grain of salt. You don't take them as fact.
Of course, some online articles are meant to be fact - Salon, perhaps even a gaming site like Blues News could if they knowingly published false information.
But I think Mr. Luskin made a mistake in the difference between "some guy who's got an opinion who happens to write it down for others to read" and "a true news organization." My hope is that the courts rule that blogs, newsgroups, and other "commentary" style online posting are just that - some person expressing their viewpoints on something, perhaps in a sarcastic tone, but not held up to the same standards as a true "news" publication.
Now, if I can just figure out which Fox News is...
Of course, this is all just my opinion. I could be wrong.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
What ever happened to free speech?
It's alive and well. It does not, however, allow someone to accuse somone else of a serious crime in print. That's libel. That bloggers, whose amateur globally-distributed ramblings would eventually be held to the same degree of accountability as the professional work of a reporter working at a newspaper in suburban Topeka should come as a relief, not a surprise.
Threats of violence in blog comments, apart from being really stupid, are an unfortunate problem for various types of political blogs. There's a real question there of legality and liability.
However, in Atrios's post describing the incident, he claims that he offered to remove the offending comments, and that Luskin demanded instead that the whole post and all of its comments be removed.
If true, that pretty much invalidates your point.
---------
get your war on
Or something like that.
P.S. - Donald Luskin shakes it more than twice.
There's nothing funny about this that I can see. Some poor guy who hasn't hurt anybody will have to spend x number of hours out of his life to deal with this crap and to make the money to pay the lawyers to get Luskin off his back. It's about as funny as the side of your car getting spraypainted with swastikas.
The point of this--which seems to escape most commenters--is that this is being used as a tactic to "out" Atrios.
He is an anonymous blogger on political issues--an especially sticky area considering our First Amendment.
Here is the expected sequence of events:
1. Luskin subpoenas blogspot.com, get's Atrios' real name.
2. Atrios served with complaint.
3. Atrios $$$$$$$$$hires lawyer$$$$$$$$$$$$
4. Lawyer writes response
5. Lawsuit dismissed because Luskin himself referred to himself as a "stalker" and the supposed slanderous comment is a mere repetition of that phrase with no added detail. There are First Amendment reasons the lawsuit should be dismissed but it's not necessary to detail them all.
Meanwhile, Atrios is no longer anonymous.
Given that the purpose of this lawsuit is not to win, but to uncover a person's identity and chill their right to free speech, Luskin and his lawyer should be subject to sanctions.
A great explanation of the full story is here, which should make it much easier to follow for people who don't read these particular blogs regularly.
It is entirely possible to be a stalker and not commit a crime. No one has suggested that Luskin has violated any of the stalking laws.
However, Luskin does appear to meet the common, non-legal usage of the term: he does appear to be obsessive about Krugman and he does appear to follow everything he does.
See here and here.
Luskin himself on the responsibility of board moderators for content expressed therein:
5 8. html
http://www.thestreet.com/comment/openbook/10609
August 30, 2000 -
The worst solution to the problem of manipulation on discussion boards is to shift the responsibility for enforcement from the regulators to the board sponsors. The host of an online discussion board is no more in a position to monitor and assure the quality of every posted message than a "common carrier" such as AT&T is to monitor every utterance made over its telephone network.
Ok, let's stop right here and apply some good, old-fashioned common sense to this.
If Joe Writer for the Nowhere News writes a column, it's likely he is viewed as a professional jounalist. Regardless of the circulation of Nowhere News it is more likely the few people who read it would believe it because it is Nowhere News' job to present factual information.
Now, if some 13 year old on a blog calls you a faggot or a child molestor it's not likely anyone of the millions upon millions of people in his world wide audience will stop and think "wow, I've really got to watch out for this RobotRunAmok guy".
I think you got it right when you said "amateur ramblings" the "globally distributed" part really doesn't matter.
you're all figments of my deranged imagination