A Win for the Blogging World!

The California Supreme Court heard a case a few months back that had the ability to turn the blogging world on its ear and essentially, shut it down completely. Today they published their decision on this critical free speech case.

The ramifications, if the California Supreme Court had found in favor of the plaintiff, would have been the equivalent of shutting down free speech through the blogosphere, and would have placed bloggers front and center in libel suits.

The winners would’ve been trial lawyers, congressmen and senators, war profiteers, campaign contributors, and the White House.

Who came out ahead? The bloggers won! The California Supreme Court rules we are protected under the 1996 Communications Decency Act and cannot be held responsible for liable by simply republishing content. This is good news considering a blogger cannot verify the sources of an original article because it is someone else’s work product not open for release (it could also potentially compromise confidential sources).

If one stops and looks at the bigger picture, it has been the blogging world that has created the stir and stoked stories the mainstream media conveniently ignored. The bloggers have united on many fronts of potential corruption and make it an issue until the mainstream media realizes it can no longer afford to ignore it. It isn’t about conscience, it’s about being outscooped by someone with no budget that tends to tick off the media giants.

It was the bloggers who exposed a dual hold by Sen. Byrd and Sen. Stevens on the pork database bill. Sen. Byrd and Sen. Stevens are both known for their ability to bring home the bacon when it comes to earmarks. Stevens is known for his infamous bridge to nowhere project. As for Byrd? "I once saw a park latrine in West Virginia that I thought was not named after him, but someone told me the sign had fallen down. " Now imagine if the blogging world was silenced; the block would have been successful and there would be no pork database bill passed .

The power of the blogging world is in part via numbers. Some might refer to us as “ underwear commandos ”, and to some degree that’s true. We can’t all live in the high rent DC or New York areas, but we all have a keyboard and can do our part. There would be no need for “underwear commandos” if the media would do their job instead of being lap dogs for the powers that be, but that’s part of the problem when one talks about media consolidation in the industry : their stories, their biases are what we are allowed to see, and they often parrot the official lines instead of engaging in good old fashioned journalism.

The court ruling is quite explicit:

“These provisions have been widely and consistently interpreted to confer broad immunity against defamation liability for those who use the Internet to publish information that originated from another source. The immunity has been applied regardless of the traditional distinction between ‘publishers’ and ‘distributors.’ Under the common law, ‘distributors’ like newspaper vendors and book sellers are liable only if they had notice of a defamatory statement in their

merchandise. The publisher of the newspaper or book where the statement originally appeared, however, may be held liable even without notice.”

Hooray! Score one for the good guys and the Internet with this ruling! I must admit, however, I fully expected the court to go in favor of the plaintiff because California judges have a well-known track record for being activist judges instead of interpreting the rule of law. It is a pleasant surprise to be proven wrong with this ruling.

quazen.com articles by this writer can be found here

socyberty.com articles can be located here

relijournal.com articles are here

picable.com photographic images are here