Standing up to the bullies

Attorney Ronald Coleman, general counsel for the Media Bloggers' Association, has written a most excellent letter to the Tulsa World after it threatened blogger Michael Bates for linking to its content and quoting small bits from the newspaper from time to time, in what has become the standard blog manner.  My favorite paragraph of the letter:

Your organization's attempt to intimidate a small media competitor and a critic with the threat of legal action over his free speech is ironic, but it is unfortunately not unique. The Media Bloggers Association Legal Defense Project was formed expressly for the purpose of providing legal advice and counsel, and if necessary to assist in securing local counsel, for webloggers and others whose freedom of expression is threatened by established institutions who act as if the purpose of the First Amendment were to protect a sort of media monopoly. It is not.

Applause.

Comments

[Lisa Williams]

Gee, that's pretty cool. I didn't know much about Media Bloggers, and I thought it was just a group for blogging journalists and journalist-style/media criticism bloggers. It's really great that they have a wider mission.

[NTodd]

Tulsa World's action appears to be par for the course these days. The old media seems hellbent on destroying the concept of democracy and free speech, all while protesting they are defending both. Part and parcel of the corporatist tilt our country is taking.

[Scott]

Great Letter. People getting annoyed at peopled linking to them, or trying to control people linking to them is very common. If you check th T&C's of many news and sites (orbitz and other travel sites prime examples) they all say not to link to them without their permission - v. funny. As the judge in the German 'Paperboy' linking case (Handelsblatt v Paperboy, the Federal Superior Court of Germany (Bundesgerichtshof)) said: "without search engines and hyperlinks (and deep-links in particular), a meaningful use and evaluation of the vast amount on information on the World wide web would be almost impossible". He went on to say that if a company/website (in this case Handelsblatt) didn’t want people deep linking to their content, all they had to do was introduce technical measures to prevent them: - subscription, registration etc.