Back on the block
Monday, November 23rd, 2009I’m back in town, after a stint overseas. If there’s some juicy speech issue I’ve missed, do drop me a line.
Are you really anonymous online?
Monday, November 23rd, 2009According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 55% of bloggers blog under a pseudonym. Obviously plenty of others use pseudonyms when posting comments about the place. Some of the posts by bloggers and commenters breach laws such as defamation, privacy, breach of confidence, harrassment and copyright. In most cases, the relevant ISPs have access […]
Wrong turn by bus campaigners
Sunday, November 22nd, 2009You know what appals me most about the save-Manners-mall-from-buses campaign’s decision to hire students to front up for a protest march? It’s not the sheer stupidity of the tactic, which was surely always likely to bite them in the bum. It’s not that they’ve completely undone their own cause, illustrating how little support they can […]
ReputationDefenders.com
Friday, November 20th, 2009This is an interesting outfit that looks to use (mostly non-lawyer-based) methods to search out client’s online reputations and help them beat back any “inaccurate, inappropriate, hurtful and slanderous information”. Dunno if they’re any good, but evidently Dr Phil thinks they are.
A prickly issue
Thursday, November 19th, 2009Cactus Kate is up in arms about some editorial guidelines she says APN management have been circulating to reporters, including those at the NZ Herald. Her most alarming claim by far is that: The thrust is all to do with NO budget allocated for legal action or defence so the editors have basically been told […]
Dueling and defamation
Wednesday, November 11th, 2009Before defamation lawsuits, there was dueling. Apparently, in 17th and 18th Century Europe it was regarded as a civilised way of protecting one’s honour, “since the alternatives were sneak attacks and brawls” writes Daniel Solove in his book The Future of Reputation. Still, thousands of people were killed in them. What I hadn’t realised was […]
Warning for defamation defendants
Wednesday, November 11th, 2009The job of the defendant in a defamation jury trial (often the media) is to convince the jury that ordinary reasonable people will not think less of the plaintiff after being exposed to the material alleged to be defamatory. You might think it will probably be enough to convince the jurors themselves, who no doubt […]
Trivia question for privacy law geeks
Wednesday, November 11th, 2009No doubt you’ve heard of the famous 1890 Harvard Law Review article “The Right to Privacy” by Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis, which paved the way for the privacy tort in the US and has been described as the “most influential law review article of all”. But do you know what they wrote before that? […]
Price’s Journalistic Aphorism #21
Wednesday, November 11th, 2009The news should be made as interesting as possible, but no more. (With apologies to Einstein, who’s often quoted as the source for the saying that “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler”. Ironically, it seems he didn’t say that at all, but something much less simple: “It can scarcely be […]
Privacy and reputation
Wednesday, November 11th, 2009Two interesting developments in the tug-of-war between privacy and defamation. The first comes in a UK injunction case. Justice Tugendhat granted an injunction to a celebrity of some sort (or at least, someone with “some public reputation”) restraining the publication of information about his encounters at his home with a prostitute some ten years ago. […]
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