P2Pnet owner Jon Newton and four anonymous commenters are facing a libel suit filed by Sharman Networks and Kazaa CEO Nikki Hemming. Apparently they were quite upset by the words of some anonymous commenters in a P2Pnet post on swimming pool incident.
It sounds absurd, but it’s true. As if Kazaa isn’t evil enough as a crappy spyware bloated virus spreading piece of software by itself….
But serious, what’s really at stake here? Where’s the so called freedom of speech? Can people start suing bloggers for quoting anonymous comments?
Is that the future of blogging?
In my opinion there is one important question:
Do you believe it could be true?
I think that whenever a blogger hears or reads something that is interesting or noteworthy, he or she is entitled to quote it, without being sued by anyone. Let there be room for debate and discussion.
Jon Newton posted a story on Nikki Hemmings “money mansion” quoting AP and a comment on a previous story.
The first quotation is from a respectable news source (which doesn’t mean that it’s the truth), the second is from a anonymous commenter. The statements could be true or false. And if you take the time to read the comment, you will see that it is obviously not in favor of Nikki Hemming, but it’s more than the regular rant.
Of course, like we all know, comments quite often nothing more than rants and raves. Like this one I found:
Nikki Hemming is getting really desperate and has pretty much lost control of her personal life. She is battling with an addiction to pain killers and with a realization that as she turns 40 and is now past her peak as a woman, her life has been more of a failure than a success. Ironically it is the wealth of Sharman Networks which she is hiding from the Australian courts, that has been for her a curse rather than a blessing. It has given her enough idle time to destroy herself and to lose perspective on reality. She lives in a world of falsehood and deceit and she has no real friends…
So will I be next now?
Read more about the case, Jon’s thoughts, and the latest updates at p2pnet
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