Words Like Locusts Flew From Her Fingers

That Chilling Effect

Respectful Insolence: Wiley & Sons: When “fair use” equals “no use”
Shelley, over at Retrospectacle posted a rather nice analysis of a paper that appeared in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture entitled Natural volatile treatments increase free-radical scavenging capacity of strawberries and blackberries. She was skeptical about news reports and press releases about the article, and did an analysis that showed that the paper did not show quite what the press was representing it as showing. In her post, she used a figure from the paper under the “fair use” doctrine to illustrate her point, and within a day received a letter from a lawyer threatening legal action if she did not immediately remove the figure.

People can be such pricks.

I’ve received threats of this kind twice.

The first time was after I wrote a couple of blog posts harshly criticizing the way a local company had treated me. What probably irritated them the most was that, at that time, the person running their own web site had apparently not yet learned the fine art of increasing ones Google ranking so, when a person would Google their company name, MY criticial blog post would come up on the first page. Heh, heh… and I got a LOT of hits from it which, as you might imagine, was pretty gratifying. Anyway, they had their lawyers write me a snotty letter threatening to sue me if I didn’t remove my posts immediately. I wrote my own letter back to the lawyers telling them that a) my blog posts were factually correct, b) I was fully entitled to publicly express my opinion of the company, and c) I was also fully entitled to encourage my fellow citizens to not do business with them. I did volunteer to remove a couple of sentences where I called the company “thieves”, saying that unsophisticated people might misunderstand that it was a figurative expression and that I wasn’t accusing the company of actually breaking the law. I made those very minor changes and I never heard from the lawyers again. And I still get LOTS AND LOTS of hits from Google and, surely, some of those people have chosen not to do business with that company because of what I wrote. Hurray! The little guy triumphs!

The other time I was threatened was pretty much just a joke. I mean… the guy was serious, but it was so ridiculous it never had me worried. I had written a post criticizing the “medical advice” (and I use the term VERY loosely) being offered for sale on a web site. Several months later, the owner of the site sent an email demanding that I remove my post and every reference to his site or he would sic his “team of lawyers” on me. As before, I responded with “No. And here’s why…” Though I did hear from that individual quite a few times afterwards via comments on my blog, no further threats of legal action were made. I get a lot of Google hits on that, too, by the way.

Anyway, I guess my whole point in writing this is to say that, first of all, be really careful that what you’ve written about an individual or a company doesn’t constitute defamation. You can find out more about that on the Electronic Frontier Foundation web site. Second, don’t allow letters from lawyers to freak you out. Lawyers are TRAINED to freak you out so you’ll back down. (Right, lawyer-buddies?) If you know you’re in the right and you’ve got the nerve for it and the time to spend, just write back to them and tell them why you won’t be complying with their request. Be polite. You don’t want to piss the lawyer off to the point where she develops a personal reason for wanting bother you because, even if you’re in the right, a lawyer on a vendetta can make your life very miserable indeed.

In the story I quoted up above, the blogger did remove the (portion of a) table she’d copied, even though she was pretty clearly making fair use of it. She has her own reasons for having done that. Maybe she just didn’t have time for the hassle and the point wasn’t important enough to her that she wanted to argue it. I’m just saying… don’t let the bastards scare you. If you’re sure you’re right, go ahead and tell them you won’t be obeying and why. Chances are that’s the last you’ll hear of it.

[Disclaimer: I'm fortunate to have my own "team of lawyers" whom I consult when in doubt about these things. It's always best to be ABSOLUTELY POSITIVELY SURE you're in the right.]