abound in this series of posts describing and rallying against the serving of a legal notice to an Indian journalist. A major news group in India demanded that Pradyuman Maheshwari remove 19 opinion pieces it considered defamatory or risk legal action. As opinion, more than likely the law is on the side of the blogger expressing his right to free speech (last I checked, they had that in India). However, most of us do not have the financial resources of a major media outlet in which to fight such legal action.
In my own experience (fortunately never this dire), I've been asked twice by two separate people to delete posts because they were not flattering (but true, albeit from my point of view). What I did do was go back, review the posts, kept the content, but made the person less identifiable. I chose to do so only because I felt that in itself was reasonable, yet it allowed me to still express myself. That's not really an option for a news-oriented blog, of course. Still, there's a limit to what I will do, however, and I suppose someone could sue me, and goodness knows I don't have money for a court battle (or for that matter, any real assets for them to 'win' by). I'd hate to think anyone would do that just to shut this or any other blog down, but that's life. On the other hand, I do try to avoid being put in that situation in the first place; this is a published media, after all, subject to copyright and also libel law. I think some bloggers forget that. I have had people specifically ask not to be named in my blog. I respect their privacy. That's one reason I've moved to using intials for most people I know. They know who they are, and if I go back and read it, I know, but you don't necessarily have to, I suppose.
I hope the situation with Mediaah! works out. For what it's worth, I signed the petition asking the media group not to sue. But the whole situation is such that if I were teaching an Internet or blogging class, I'd bring it up as an example of murky Internet legal issues.
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