Another blogger has gotten a letter from a legal department.
Micheal Bates of Batesline blogs about various things including local politics in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He has received national attention because of legal letter he received yesterday from the local newspaper, Tulsa World.
Wizbang, CNN and others have picked this up.
Bates uses adolescent language in his criticism of the paper, calling it Whirled, the local social networking Cockroach Caucus, and other supposedly cute substitions. He has been blogging since 2003.
The legal letter is from the VP at the paper, and others have also received it.
It is not illegal to link, excerpting material with intent to criticise is covered under fair use law.
No one can be sued for adolescent language about issues, especially if/when the criticism is researched and true - it looks like the paper has completely over-reached by threatening a blog, a radio station and a city councillor.
Published 3 years, 7 months ago
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I’m not familiar with his blogging practices. Some bloggers do excerpt far beyond anything that could be considered fair use — sometimes re-printing as much as 2/3 of an entire article.
There are radio stations in Oklahoma that do little more in their news than lift stories from newspapers. I think that is disrespectful to journalists who have labored hard over a story.
Since there are no official blogging ethics, the newspaper may be trying to help set the boundaries for what is fair use. Perhaps they have overreacted, but the Tulsa World is a conservative Republican newspaper that tends to take a cautious stance toward just about everything.
I spent some time at his site, but not enough to grasp Tusla politics. Thanks Joel.
One would think that a news paper, of all organizations, would have a healthy respect for those quaint notions of fair use and 1st Amendment rights.
But then, who knows if it was some rocket surgeon in the bowels of the paper’s legal department who cooked this up.