Speech on Legal Issues impacting Bloggers

Posted October 6th, 2007 by Robert Cox
in

With Notre Dame's season a total bust where better to be for the Notre Dame v. USC game than giving a speech at the SPJ National Convention in Washington, DC. They asked me for a little promo write up which goes something like this...

Bloggers and Journalists: Friends or Foes?

Legal action against bloggers has skyrocketed during the past three years. While some cases have merit, most are lawsuits designed to suppress free speech. Meanwhile, journalists have sought to differentiate themselves from bloggers through self-regulation and legislation. But should they? As new organizations have begun to embrace blogs and user-generated content, the “blogging v. journalism” debate has begun to dissolve, replaced instead by a greater awareness that what threatens bloggers today may well threaten professional journalists tomorrow.

I quantified data from Eric Robinson's list of legal cases filed against bloggers over at the Media Law Resource Center web site and produced some nifty analysis of current trends in cases being brought against bloggers.

Highlights:

Perez Hilton represents about 10% of all cases brought against bloggers.
North Dakota is the "most dangerous state" for bloggers
Blog title most likely to result in a lawsuit reads something like "Dr. So-and-So is a Fraud".

UPDATE: SPJ has video and audio from my speech but you have to be an SPJ member to watch/listen.