Anyone have experience with a company threatening legal action over what you wrote on a blog? I got a call today from a company attorney saying I must remove a certain page from my blog because it is libelous and because it appears on the first page of Google’s rankings. They said they wouldn’t have any problem with the page if it didn’t appear so high, but since it does, they want me to take it down, otherwise they will sue me.

I responded that I have no control over Google rankings (wish I did) but if they would point out to me what is libelous I would be happy to look it over and see if I agree with them or not and possibly change it, in consultation with a lawyer. The funny thing is the post is almost two years old. The only real reason they have a problem with it is because it is in the top 10 (actually it is #3!) in Google’s rankings when searching for the company. The thing is, I am not the only one who does not view this company in high-esteem, it’s just I am the only one with the Google ranking to back it up.

So, one question I have is where does free speech end and libel begin? I want to be on the right side of the law, but I also am not going to give up my free speech rights, either just because I was threatened by some big company. Can others please help me out with their experiences here? Should I be contacting someone (lawyer, ACLU, Electrionic Freedom Frontier, etc.) about this so I can know what my rights are? I really don’t want to take down the post, but I am open to editing it to clean it up if I am on the wrong side of the law.

Furthermore, am I, as a blogger, responsible for comments that people leave on my site? I suppose I am since I approved them, but I also accepted comments that were both pro and con on the topic, even when they were quite derogatory towards me. In fact, some of the people that were supporting the company were quite libelous towards me. Does that mean, as employees (or franchise owners) of the company that they are legally in trouble with me?

This entry was posted on Friday, September 7th, 2007 at 7:18 pm and is filed under ACLU, Blog, Blogging, Free Speech, Google, Jobs, Misc., Search Engines, legal, libel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.