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Should bloggers be Teflon-coated?

By Lawrence B. Ebert, Esq.

In a post titled Don?t Like a Blog, Sue It on the ipeg blog, one has the text:

Bloggers should be given almost unlimited freedom of speech. Only in the rarest of circumstances would we agree to limitations (have problems finding an example).

The ipeg blog refers to Joff Wild at IAM, who wrote:

Instinctively, I believe that there has to be a very good reason indeed to over-rule someone's right to freedom of speech. What complicates things, though, in this case is the Cisco factor. Freedom of speech is important, but so is disclosure. Readers of the Troll Tracker blog should have been told that Frenkel was a Cisco employee, especially as others at the company knew what he was doing and Cisco itself has a very strong anti-troll agenda. There is no reason to believe that Frenkel did anythng other than act on his own initiative, and you can see why he would have wanted to remain anonymous; but I can also see why someone who had been frequently criticised on the blog with, as he felt, no right of reply, would see red once the truth emerged.

IPBiz agrees with Joff that Rick Frenkel had a conflict of interest, which should have been disclosed. IPBiz further believes that Mallun Yen of Cisco was aware of what Frenkel is doing.

Neither the ipeg nor IAM posts get into the issue of the possible falsity of what Frenkel wrote. Bloggers are not different from anyone else, and should not get a pass on falsity. This is especially true for anonymous bloggers. Thus, IPBiz rejects the general proposition: bloggers should be given almost unlimited freedom of speech. Of course, when one thinks of Mike Masnick...

See also the IPBIz post
Hosteny's "The Cowardice of Anonymous Bloggers" on an article by Joe Hosteny in IPT.

http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2009/09/troll-tracker-case-settles.html

Full post as published by IPBiz on September 29, 2009 (boomark / email).