The End of Cyber Creeps? No one wants to chill speech. And last week’s opinion and jury verdict in Obsidian Finance v. Cox (D.C. Or.) may not be black-letter law perfect. (Despite Cox’s post-trial comments that she can’t pay the $2.5 million verdict against her, watch for some serious interest in and help with her appeal.) But something new if tricky might grow out of Obsidian and other extreme cases like it. Bloggers of the on-line hater and notes-from-the-underground persuasion may no longer have the luxury of what I call “Cartooning”: (1) purposely attempting to mar reputations of non-public plaintiffs through malicious, bad and incomplete “reporting” in non-hot news scenarios and (2) manipulating the Net to make sure tabla rasa humans or those with no axe to grind see it. Do see in Forbes by Kashmir Hill (she handles a very difficult bit of news and its issues deftly) “Why An Investment Firm Was Awarded $2.5 Million After Being Defamed By Blogger“. Lots of relief in these cases could come from the common law of nearly all (about 45) of the American states. Now, let’s see. What were those four categories of defamation per se again? And the elements of false light privacy? And…
