This is an important article, have patience to go through this. This article is predominantly aimed at understanding “Blogging Individuals rights and related Laws“. Since I am not that familiar with rights and laws with regards to expressing views in the form of a blog, I would like to know from readers on what is the border line. As far as my knowledge goes, bloggers are usually reviewers as well as critics of many things that happen around them. Expressing their personal views seem to attract the bad eyes of certain organizations. Instead of listening to those views and correcting themselves, they seem to have taken the back door method of scaring, threatening the bloggers in the name of ‘Defamation’ suites. What a shame, these organizations have either any clue on how to solve their issues or have a reasonable method to prove the bloggers wrong. Since they are unable to get the nexus of views expressed by bloggers, these organizations are taking a very lame and coward steps. Is hitting back on an individual blogger in the form of a defamation is the only solution?
If these organizations were so genuine and legitimate, why to zero on bloggers? In fact they tend to forget the very basic fact that bloggers are the ones who point to the flaws in their system. Taking those as building blocks, companies should aim at improvising where they fail miserably. My suggestion for such companies is ‘Learn to be thankful’ to such bloggers. Since the flaws have been exposed, half of the problems are solved for such a company. It would be a great gesture to mankind if those companies correct themselves and come back to the public, acknowledge their flaws and talk about the remedy action. In case the bloggers are grossly wrong in their views and far from reality, be polite and tell public how they are wrong. Most of the companies do have at least ‘One‘ web site if not ‘MANY‘ these days. I don’t understand why they don’t use such a great medium to help themselves to prove legitimate and to address any of the wrong views expressed by bloggers. This certainly brings in a lot of trust and credibility in my view. I really feel pity for those companies which hit back on bloggers by scaring and harassing in the name of defamation. Instead of ‘Thinking Positively‘ to utilize a golden opportunity provided by bloggers to alleviate myths, it is saddening to see the companies taking the legal ways to nullify bloggers thoughts. In my view, only those companies which are really scared of bloggers and find no way to back them up take such black mailing modes to protect their questionable business modules.
Having blogged for over 2 years, at this juncture of time I am trying to understand if there are any laws that define the extent to which bloggers can express their views. I do understand that, at times the comments posted by some people on a given article may be offensive. But threatening the blog admin to eliminate the complete thread is terribly a bad idea. That just shows the extent to which some companies have deteriorated in the context of trying to save their business. I would be more than willing to listen to the views of my blog audience on such articles. Also, can someone point me to the legal aspects of a blogger’s rights please?
Manjunath says
@Mohan
“On the lighter side, Google search is pathetic for the suggested query while Yahoo! search seem to be more relevant :))”
I use both search engine in parallel and i am using the net extensively from past 4 years according to me
Google returns better result than yahoo with various keywords and combinations of phrases where as yahoo had improved a bit now a days…
Google Index and Crawls websites 10 times faster than yahoo so google always has fresh information
Google has higher “keyword” detection rate compared to yahoo
Though in early 2000 i was using altavista i switched to google after its initial launch till now which is my favourite and default search engine…….
Mohan says
@Radhika Ganesan
Thanks for the help. Unfortunately, all my research on the topic while writing this article pointed me to a couple of links that mentioned “blogging and blogs related issues doesn’t fall under cyber law”!
On the lighter side, Google search is pathetic for the suggested query while Yahoo! search seem to be more relevant :))
Radhika Ganesan says
This link http://w2.eff.org/bloggers/lg/ is for US bloggers ! The bloggers rights have been discussed here !
Please read this as well http://infotech.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1152525.cms . Just give “Blogging law + India” in google …. you will get few more info… I couldn’t read much as lots of sites are inaccessible from my office !
Mohan says
@Shrinidhi Hande
You think the cult rotten companies do sue publicly? They always follow the back doors by approaching the blogger alone and threaten if he/she isn’t much into legal stuff.
@Radhika Ganesan
There you go. Yes. That is exactly the legal aspect i am trying to explore. Are there any rights that protect a blogger’s views? What is the extent of acts that define defamation suites is per book? Any pointers would be appreciable.
Radhika Ganesan says
Agree with Shrinidhi … nice blog …. there can be some rule like – if the company is offended by the content of a post , it can check if it is true or not. If the content is true it cannot sue you, in case it does in spite of this law , it will be liable to pay a very big amount or may be blacklisted or some stern action that i can’t think of , which will be enough reason not to harass the blogger! That requires the post to provide ample evidence and collect it with oneself to be on the safer side.
Shrinidhi Hande says
It is not practical for large companies to sue small bloggers- initially, say 100 people might have visited that blog- if company initiates a legal case, the blog will become popular overnight with everyone visiting with a curiosity to see what is there in the blog that agitated a company…thus more people read the post, comment and support him if there’s any truth in what he has written and bloggers purpose gets served, even if later the court order may require him to delete the post. .
As you said I feel it is better for companies to address the concerns raised by the blogger instead of silencing him. I am sure general public is smart enough to differentiate between baseless allegations, genuine appreciation/criticism and sponsored content.
Manjunath says
@Srinath
No, latest studies shows that the information provided in blogs are more accurate than that of site the only difference between blogs and websites are the sites are more structured and great care taken for grammatical and presentation….
however blogs are more reliable than websites in terms of information as it involves real life experiences unlike websites where the authors are more targeted on news and traffic flow….
Mohan says
@Srinath
Good point. Though there might be a huge number of bloggers, but the number of issues/flaws pointed by them wont be too many. I don’t expect the organizations to go to every blog and address over there. Better have a controlled forum on their own site, where in all the issues are addressed through a proper channel.
On the lighter side, whether you believe it or not – there are few organizations which have all the time in the world to visit all those blogs and threaten the admins through legal action. So, you still stand by your words?
Srinath says
hehe, this looks funny to me. How can you expect the companies to reply for countably infinite number of bloggers out there, some of them pretend to be someone else – like fake steve jobs, fake bill gates etc. Also, not every blog article written on internet makes sense, 99% of them are crap..