Therefore, you can understand my shock when I recently received an email accusing me of slander and threatening legal action—for one, that my blog would be expunged if I did not remove the offense immediately. I'm not going to repeat the statement in question, as I feel the dispute has been resolved, and I do not have the time to see it perpetuated or the energy to match my accuser's incivility. In the spirit of fairness and common sense, the statement has been deleted in its entirety.
It was never my intention to impugn the integrity of the entity that I was accused of defaming. My errors, whatever they may have been, were the result of a possible overstep in articulating a matter of public interest and, if it is in fact the case, an honest mistake. Of course, I have no wish to comment about said entity now, other than to say I have no reason to believe at the moment that it is not perfectly viable and successful. I do wish, however, to make a few analytical points about the statement in question in an effort to reach some useful abstract conclusion for other bloggers.
First of all, the burden of proof is on the accuser. Was I inadvertent? Potentially. Guilty of slander? Maybe not. Like every legal issue, it's hardly simple, and my counsel is just as good at semantics as yours is. While I may have opined about the aesthetic value of an entity's name, I did not presume to present any fact about that entity. The charge of defamation might stand on firmer ground with my declaration that the Web site of such entity was no longer in operation. In this case I may have been unintentionally inaccurate, even though on the occasion of the relevant blog entry, I had found no contradictory evidence after a thorough investigation. Perhaps there were server problems at the time; nevertheless, it would be up to the accuser to produce proof of Web site functionality and seamless domain registration. That would seem to require an inordinate effort for what might be considered a paltry faux pas. Immeasurably more strenuous would be the accuser's attempt to prove the damage inflicted by a homely, little-read blog keeping to itself in the corner of the Internet: There were zero comments on that post. I would posit that the majority of my profile views are the gross tally of stumbling, accidental Web surfers. How and to what degree has the supposedly defamed entity been adversely affected by a statement that was made over a year ago and is only just now being brought up?
If this is First Amendment debate, I'm not equipped to pursue it there. I am curious, though, about the extension of my individual rights to blogging. I have no desire to fabricate lies or disseminate false information, but I wonder where my right to expression ends, i.e. whom can I call an ass? Is it that I can say I'm fearful of Dick Cheney or that I distust Rex Tillerson, ExxonMobil's CEO, but have to bite my tongue with reference to ordinary figures? Is there a legal scale of damage that applies, or merely a practical one? Is it that if I claim both Rex Tillerson and Mr. Smith, owner of Smith's Flower Shop, are incompetent organizational leaders, each has a legitimate grievance for whatever injury to consumer confidence in his respective business I have created? Are these, in fact, the differences: that, relatively, the damage to Mr. Smith is greater, as his corporate entity lies outside of some standing public trust, and its welfare is consequently more susceptible to singular opinions—and that Mr. Smith, at the end of the day, has enough time and concern to prosecute me?
The academic issue whether to interpret defamation in a blog as slander or libel is also pertinent here. Whatever my scrawling pretensions, at this point I have never considered Rural Pen to be journalistic documentation. I have made general inquiries and attempted to record current events in the midst of their unfolding and uncertainty. Like most bloggers, my tone has always tended toward the personal and confessional, and I have composed under the notion that I was having an informal (and sporadic) conversation with a few like-minded readers, real and imagined. Because of my use of the first person, my tone, and the temporal nature of a blog, I would think that I could be guilty of slander—unfortunate cries in the moment—but not libel.
However, this incident has forced me to rethink my idea of Internet publication. On the one hand, blogging is an ephemeral user experience. When I read the email notifying me of impending legal action, I did not remember the statement in question because, as I said, over a year had passed since its composition. It had been written as most bloggers write, like diarists, and was part of the normal blogging process of quasi-linked utterances. If I considered my statement in some way “past,” my accuser did not. And the discrepancy in understanding probably owes to the remarkable exactitude of search engines. I haven't googled anything in the last year that would have returned that particular blog post in the results. But I would suspect, that perhaps after some vain googling, my accuser found the offending statement readily presented to him or her as it would be to anyone who makes the same search—that is, as an almost permanent document. And, obviously, such permanence can entail liability and requires particular editorial conscientiousness.
I find it hard to walk away from this legal threat without an increased sense of self-importance, which should be shared with other bloggers. No sane person would bring suit against a commenter on an online article or a poster in a forum. But it's clear that a blogger commands substantially more respect. I'll spare you a cliché about power and responsibility because the moral here is not to check. Instead, watch your words, not with jeopardy in mind, but influence.
One effect of this experience is that in the future I'll be loath to poke fun of any domain name. Also, in order to prepare other bloggers for a similar experience, I am pasting my accuser's letter below with names and the statement in question all redacted. I think it speaks for itself. But I suppose it's nice just to be on someone's mind.
Donn,
I've just come across your entry for [REDACTED] where you state, [REDACTED].
I am the designer, owner and proprietor of [REDACTED], and am demanding you remove this statement, as [REDACTED] is not, and has never been, [REDACTED]. Not only is this slander and defamation of character, it's false and inaccurate information posted in response to your obvious dislike for [REDACTED].
The remainder of your blog entries suggest the type of intellect you possess, which obviously isn't much more than the "chicken shit" occupation you boast on your profile. One thing I'm sure you will understand, however, is that I've contacted my attorney regarding this matter and will not hesitate to pursue your slanderous behavior through legal channels, which I've been advised is well within my rights. I've already contact Blogger and Google in response to this, and unless you remove the above referenced statements, you will leave me no choice than to make removing your entire Rural Pen site my next project.
Regards,
[REDACTED]
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