Jim Dolan's Lawsuit Against Cityfile Highlights The Need For Stronger Anti-SLAPP Laws
from the silencing-dissent dept
The Citizen Media Law Project has yet another story of bogus lawsuits being used to silence something someone doesn't want written about them. In this case, it involved Jim Dolan, known (but not particularly liked) to New Yorkers as the owner of Cablevision, the Knicks and Madison Square Garden. More recently, Cablevision bought the newspaper Newsday -- so you might think that Dolan would be a little more aware of why it's bad to sue a news publication claiming defamation over a clearly speculative piece. And, yet, sue he did. Dolan sued the blog Cityfile for posting a piece about rumors that Dolan was considering getting rid of the famous "Christmas Spectacular" involving the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall in New York. As Arthur Bright points out, the original post doesn't seem all that different than speculative articles published all the time in pretty much every media outlet.Unfortunately, facing a protracted legal fight, Cityfile agreed to settle and "retract" the story. Bright notes that this is silly, and any decent lawyer should have been able to get the lawsuit tossed on First Amendment grounds. The problem is the time and resources needed to fight such a thing.
Bright then points out how this highlights the need for stronger anti-SLAPP laws in New York. Anti-SLAPP laws let people fight back against such bogus lawsuits, whose purpose is only to silence speech (SLAPP stands for Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation). The problem, however, is that right now anti-SLAPP laws are at the state level, and only a few states have really strong ones. New York is not one of them. While Bright says this is evidence of why NY should strengthen its anti-SLAPP laws, a better solution might be a strong federal anti-SLAPP law, that shows a strong support for freedom of speech, and helps prevent bogus lawsuits whose only purpose is to allow those with more money to silence speech they dislike.
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Filed Under: anti-slapp, free speech, jim dolan, new york
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Streisand effect
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/54667,news-commen t,business,twitter-claims-another-scalp-as-trafigura-backs-down
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Re: Streisand effect
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If I put up on a blog "Mike Masnick is considering sex with small furry animals", without anything to back it up, I would be in legal trouble. The statements by the reporter are no different.
It's all in how you look at it. Big companies aren't always wrong.
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Re:
But it would be. You see, what you said would qualify as defamation. What happened here was not defamation at all. The author wrote about a rumor of something not illegal nor immoral, just something he didn't want happening. You know, standard kind of crap put out by every single news outlet in the US.
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Re:
Did you pay attention to the facts concerning this case? Cityfile posted a speculative piece about rumors. Unless I'm mistaken, rumors usually aren't backed up by facts. And once facts come out to back it up, it's no longer a rumor.
Also, couldn't Jim Dolan have given a very quick interview to Cityfile to squelch the rumor? Unless they had a grudge against him, they likely would had a piece titled something like "Jim Dolan sets the record straight."
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Re: Re:
>Cityfile posted a speculative piece about rumors. Unless
>I'm mistaken, rumors usually aren't backed up by facts. And
>once facts come out to back it up, it's no longer a rumor.
Plus isn't the existence of the rumor a fact if it is presented as a rumor that is making the rounds. You can report on a rumor as long as it is identified as such.
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Re:
Tee-hee! Man bites dog!
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Free Speech?
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Freedom of Speech? HA
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What? Don't you know...
Let him know how blue the sky is, how his farts don't stink...
His knicks are king, and Madison Square Garden is an absolute pleasure finding a parking spot. Cablevision is the highest quality service and when I call their customer service, I get the smell of warm cinnamon buns through the phone.
As servants to Jimmy, we create paintings and marble sculptures of him naked with grotesquely larger than life (or "average") genitalia.
We looooove you JIM DOLAN!!!! And you're NOT gay because you had a failed RAINBOW (MEDIA) COMPANY in your past.
Cheer up!
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