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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: gnuman who wrote (62073)	6/11/1999 9:35:00 AM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

Interesting demonstration of the competing interests to be balanced in cases involving public speech, and also the parameters of civility of cyberspace. If you and I were sitting around in my living room saying nasty things about a stock, that might be public enough to satisfy a law school hypothetical, but I don't think it's public enough to satisfy the requirements to bring a lawsuit in real life. If we say nasty things about a stock in a newsletter or a newspaper, that's clearly public enough to maybe trigger a lawsuit. Here I am, sitting in my home office, in shorts and a teeshirt, barefooted, writing things on my computer that are going to be read by other people on their computers. I don't feel like a publisher, but I probably am. OK, then, if I am saying nasty things about a stock over the Internet, why doesn't the First Amendment protect me? Because it's what's called "commercial speech." The First Amendment protects debate about politics, religion, and art, to a very high degree, but to a much lesser extent, debate about commerce. For purposes of this lawsuit, forget the First Amendment. So then we go to the law of defamation. Were the statements false? Did they cause injury? To protect themselves, the defendants will have to hire lawyers and duke it out at high dollar cost in court. You might say, well, these defendants are little guys, they won't be able to pay a judgment. But shutting them up is the goal. I believe this is what is called a SLAPP suit, don't know what the acronym stands for, but it's intended to scare everyone else so they won't say nasty things about stocks in public. Big business has been filing SLAPP suits against activists for several years now, against consumer advocates, against environmentalists, and now against people who, like David, take on Goliath, in the investment arena. Even if you win in the end, if you get hit with a SLAPP suit, you'll be ruined shelling out attorney's fees. Edit: (A SLAPP suit is a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation).