Blogs and the Law

Seeing Kimberly Kralowec's post reminded me I want to point readers (especially those of you who are bloggers) to a new working paper on the law and economics of blogging, by Univ. of IL law professor Larry Ribstein.

I found his defamation discussion most interesting - especially the idea that libel law may change as a result of blogging. It's no longer difficult for private persons who are maligned to access a public forum to "counteract false statements."

In the meantime, since the law has not changed yet, Andrew Sullivan said (elsewhere) that he set up a limited liability corporation for his blog to insulate him from lawsuits.

MR. SHAFER: ...  So I would say that I tend not to predict, because I always predict wrong, but I would venture that what we'll see is, you know, the full First Amendment rights and prosecutions of libel extending to the blogosphere that we—

MR. SULLIVAN: I bought an expensive liability insurance.

MR. SHAFER: Yeah?

MR. SULLIVAN: Yeah, at the very beginning. Which actually took up a certain of the money that we raised. Precisely because. And set up an LLC, you know, so that the blog exists independently of me as a little company, as it were, just so—because I was nervous, given how many people might have it in for me, that I might be liable to that. But we don't know. I mean, it's basically untested. We have no idea what the possible standards of this are legally

Comments

[Grant]

Would be interesting to hear more on this. I am curious because I post news articles on my blog.

Any follow ups would be great.

Grant
http://www.lifesettlementpro.com/news/