This Should Terrify You…

There are a million ways to take this article. The biggest one is this: unless you're a fellow traveller, the Fifth Estate doesn't care about you. Who is this really aimed at? Bloggers. Me. You. Anyone who wants to express an unpopular opinion or voices an opinion about someone with a thin skin is going to be under fire from here on out. The courts have essentially removed the right to privacy for bloggers. Apparently, it's better to threaten to kill innocent people at a football game or to claim to be a Medal of Honor winner than to call someone a mindless Manchurian candidate-slash-ruler of an inconsequential country.

Huh?

While yes – I know that yelling 'fire' isn't protected speech, but the right to speak my mind in any forum is the cornerstone of the Bill of Rights. I have a right to call a local politician an ineffectual, unorganized person. It is my opinion and I should be able to do it either right to his face (and personally wish more people would do this) or do it through a public forum. The Supreme Court has upheld the rights of anonymous pamphleteers, calling it an essential freedom. What is happening in this article amounts to nothing more than an end-run around the First Amendment. A car salesman sued someone because they said their cars were junk. I was a car salesman at one point. The cars I tried to sell were junk, but it was running junk. People called me a thief, a liar, a cheat and did their best to guarantee that I would never know the joys of the so-called 'honest-ass living'. Did I stamp my feet and call him a meanie? No. Did I get my lawyer and claim that his opinion (and that's what it is, everyone) was hurting my business (which it was)? No. I ignored him because he/she/it wasn't worth the energy it would take to deal with him/her/it.

Remember the phrase "Don't make a federal case out of it"? Apparently, a lot of you have.

I am not surprised who put out this article – the very people who are being hurt by the blogosphere. The people who are getting their [censored] handed to them day in and day out. What are they saying? If you're one of us, you're protected. If you're not – you're screwed.

 

Jugulare Mortuos, you future defendants