Slashdot Mirror
Heartland Institute Threatens To Sue Anyone Who Comments On Leaked Documents
Layzej writes "Bloggers around the world have been commenting on recently leaked Heartland Institute documents that reveal their internal strategies to discredit climate science. These posters are now under threat of legal action. According to the Heartland Institute 'the individuals who have commented so far on these documents did not wait for Heartland to confirm or deny the authenticity of the documents. We believe their actions constitute civil and possibly criminal offenses for which we plan to pursue charges and collect payment for damages'"
Many of the documents seem to be genuine, but the "smoking gun" document that everyone is quoting looks like a fake. This possibility seems to have been raised first here on Slashdot by eldavojohn, and Megan McArdle of The Atlantic has written extensively about it.
The Heartland people are making themselves look bad with these silly threats, though, which will lose them the sympathy they should get as victims of a forgery-based smear job.
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
Although I agree with your sentiments wholeheartedly I don't think 'begs the question' means what you think it means
Megan McArdle? Really?
Just what does an economics writer who knows nothing about either economics or simple math have to do with document authentication?
Their target audience might just see the leaks as the work of the conspiracy of freedom haters and lap up the message.
Of course they will. The very same people that were so pleased that the CRU email server was hacked into in the so called "Climategate" affair. That said how great it was that this information was now in the public domain.
Cretins.
"methinks the lady doth protest too much"
if the documents were fake, they wouldn't elicit such a strong reaction. therefore, the documents are real
Not to be nit-picky, but when the queen said this in Hamlet, she meant "promise" too much, as the word was sometimes used then.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
There is actually a pretty significant amount of evidence it's faked. Every document in the bundle except the strategy memo and an IRS document was printed to PDF in the central time zone. The IRS document was printed to PDF in GMT-4. The strategy memo was scanned in with an Epson scanner to a PDF by someone in the Pacific time zone. All documents except the strategy memo and a board directory were printed to PDF on January 16, the day before a board meeting. The board directory was printed January 25. The strategy memo was created at 3:41 PM on February 13. If you want more, read over here.
In short, it really looks like someone got a bunch of real documents and then threw something in to sex it up a bit. The problem for them is that they did it so damned badly. The problem for Heartland is that they're acting like dicks toward a lot of people, when they should be upending heaven and hell to find the memo forger and crucifying him for libel.
"Truth is a complete defence against defamation." And you know the disputed document is authentic how, exactly?
It doesn't matter whether the documents are authentic. The issue at stake is whether anyone who read the documents and commented upon them had reason to believe that their own comments were false.
"For example, the Minnesota Supreme Court has held:
We hold that a private individual may recover actual damages for a defamatory publication upon proof that the defendant knew or in the exercise of reasonable care should have known that the defamatory statement was false. The conduct of defamation defendants will be judged on whether the conduct was that of a reasonable person under the circumstances."
Since there's clearly no way to know whether any statement related to these documents is false, the commenters are clearly safe.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
And herein lies the problem with your argument: "According to Heartland"
You are assuming that Heartland has no stake in this game and of course would also tell the truth. At this point, you can't assume any of these are invalid, or valid given that the only folks talking are those with the documents, and those that lost them.
Well, let's see. Except for the one document, ever single one is a professionally designed print to pdf document with creation dates in early and mid January and which has a timecode of CST the region where Heartland has it's main offices. The "memo" is a poorly scanned document that reads like a 8th grader's "how to talk like a supervillain" letter with plenty of copypasta and an outright falsehood. Namely that the Koch brother's donation was concerned with climate change. Given that the donation code was HCN and that Bayer AG and multiple other pharma and medical companies also have the same donation code this is unlikely to say the least. Then there's the fact that the memo was scanned in Februray with a timecode of PST. All in all, a shittastic smear job.