Blogger Alert: Protect Yourself From Internet Defamation Lawsuits and Other On-line Liability

Traverse Legal Radio Interview with Robert Cox, President of Media Bloggers Association.  Mr. Cox discusses the rise in defamation lawsuits against bloggers and the steps they can take to protect themselves. Traverse Legal's Attorneys provide representation on issues of Internet law and on-line defamation cases. To read the full transcript of Mr. Cox's interview concerning internet defamation cases against bloggers here.

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Important quotes from Mr. Cox's interview found below:

• in 2004 when we started there was about a dozen cases … more than doubled each year since.
• publisher, or broadcaster of any kind is going to have to be whether or not the person writing it knew it to be untrue and published it and that it somehow cast the person in some sort of negative light.
• bloggers win in about 96%, 97% of the cases. And so, the cases aren’t often successful, but the cost of defending in a defamation lawsuit can be quite expensive.
• standing on their virtual soap box saying whatever they believe. In court they’re going to be treated as publishers. And so, that shift has to occur in the mindset of people who are blogging which is that they are in fact both, they’re a writer and a publisher.
• if you’re stating opinion then it’s going to be very difficult for somebody to win a defamation case.
• You want to not get the lawsuit in the first place. And so, that’s what we focus on.
• In our experience we’ve been involved in hundreds of legal threats against bloggers and we’ve had less than twenty that have actually proceeded to court, so it is possible to knock these things down or get them to go away. Of course, the best thing to do is to not have the problem in the first place.