I Betcha Think This Blog Is About You

Last night while conducting an interview for my upcoming thesis "Why All Women Are Crazy" I got a very strong "don't put me in your blog again!". I suddenly started hearing the chorus to the Janet Jackson song "Son of a Gun ( I betcha think this song is about you )" with the obvoious word changed.

These leads to the question, Can we blog about people we know personally? And if you can, Do they have the right to have those posts removed? Time to roll up the pretend Law & Order skills.

The Blogger Legal FAQ for Students had a few interesting points to consider. This quote comes from the section about students blogging about one of their teachers.

Merely criticizing or insulting schoolteachers and administrators, even with vulgar language, likely will not amount to the "material disruption" required by the Supreme Court...although your opinions are protected by the First Amendment, publishing defamatory content —even jokingly—may get you in trouble at school, and maybe even get you sued.

So lets give this a little real world spin. Lets say on a future blog post I say "Mrs Jane Doe is a crazy psycho Biotch!" To qualify for defamation or in this case libel (since it would be written defamation) I would have to have written that sentence as a statement of fact and not my opionion. I doubt Mrs Jane Doe thinks she is a biotch, or maybe she does admit she is a biotch but not a crazy psycho one, just a Nights and Weekend Biotch (starting at 7 if she has Sprint) but either way, how do you prove that someone is a biotch?

For defamation to work the statement of fact has to be verifiable. The Faq on Defamation had this to say...

A statement that the plaintiff is a "Dumb Ass," even first among "Dumb Asses," communicates no factual proposition susceptible of proof or refutation.

So let us again use Mrs Jane Doe as our test subject. Lets assume Mrs. Jane Doe took my suggestion in The Blogs Have Ears and is considering having sex with donkeys. If I say on a future post that "Mrs. Jane Doe wants to have sex with donkeys", there's no way to prove that she was infact thinking about it. The only remote way would be admit to it, and then the statement of fact would be infact, true.

Finally, anyone with atleast two neurons connected would make it hard for people to figure out who Mrs. Jane Doe really is.

To state a defamation claim, the person claiming defamation need not be mentioned by name — the plaintiff only needs to be reasonably identifiable. So if you defame the "government executive who makes his home at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue," it is still reasonably identifiable as the president.

So Mrs. Jane Doe could be really be anybody! It could even be a dude, a car, or even a goldfish. Ahh isn't the internet wonderful. Now I could be totally wrong so any Law oriented individual, please let me know if i'm on the right path here.

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