I hate reading stories like that of Jason Kottke’s problems with Sony this week. While I do not know much about the legal positions on either side I do have an initial visceral reaction related to the so called chilling effects of lawsuits directed towards individual, independant writers.
As Jason writes today:
I worry about whether I can continue to post things (legal or not) that may upset large companies and result in lawsuits that they can afford and I cannot. The NY Times can risk upsetting large companies in the course of their journalistic duties because they are a large company themselves, they know their rights, and they have a dedicated legal team to deal with stuff like this.
As Anil writes:
I’m guessing they didn’t call the Washington Post and ask them to remove this part of their story
