Bloggers’ ranting style protects in free speech cases but may hurt in other realms
donal brown
November 8, 2011
Bloggers may win victories in defamation cases since their heated critical commentary is easily identified as opinion rather than fact and not libelous, but the advantage may have a serious down side, writes John Sharkey for the Citizen Media Law Project. Sharkey is concerned that in ruling for bloggers in defamation cases, judges are making disparaging comments about blogging, saying in one case that “blogs are a subspecies of online speech which inherently suggest that