Wow, Apple is ordered to pay $700,000 for bloggers’ legal fees.
This is great news. It’ll make companies think twice before going after bloggers.
I’ve caught wind of a lot more legal actions being pulled against Bloggers, not just me either. I advise companies not to do that. It almost always backfires.
One guy got fired cause he used legal devices against a blogger in Maine, I learned from Shel Israel.
Be careful out there. The stakes are going way up and that’s pushing companies to use legal devices against bloggers. Unfortunately you don’t read about most of this kind of stuff – most bloggers who’ve talked with me have already been given a gag order. Break the gag order and they’ll increase their legal exposure and demonstrate that they aren’t operating in good faith. Remember, libel gets worse if there’s malice. So, if there’s a potential you’ve libeled someone, then going public about legal instruments can be used against you. I’ve been getting a lot of calls from bloggers lately asking for advice on this stuff. I’m no lawyer, but quickly getting to know some who are experts in this area. Most advise you not to talk on your blog when you get a legal attack and immediately see a lawyer to protect yourself.
I think that by the end of the year we’ll need to form a legal group just to help bloggers out. When a big company with deep pockets comes after you it’s very unnerving (and potentially financially devastating), even if you haven’t done anything wrong. Increasingly companies are going after bloggers because of the huge stakes involved (companies are increasingly sensitive to what’s being said about them because of the economic power of Google and other search engines).
And, if you make the wrong legal judgment, you could even spend time in jail. Ask Josh Wolf, who is spending a year in jail because of his decision not to hand over his videotape.
Be careful out there. The lawyers are watching.
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Robert Scoble is the founder of the Scobleizer blog. He works as PodTech.net’s Vice President of Media Development.
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