In a case that’s sending a frightening message to the blogger community, a U.S. District Court judge ruled that a blogger must pay $2.5 million to an investment firm she wrote about — because she isn’t a real journalist.

As reported by Seattle Weekly, Judge Marco A. Hernandez said Crystal Cox, who runs several blogs, wasn’t entitled to the protections afforded to journalists — specifically, Oregon’s media shield law for sources — because she wasn’t “affiliated with any newspaper, magazine, periodical, book, pamphlet, news service, wire service, news or feature syndicate, broadcast station or network, or cable television system.”

The Obsidian Finance Group sued Cox in January for $10 million for writing several blog posts critical of the company and its co-founder, Kevin Padrick. Obsidian argued that the writing was defamatory. Cox represented herself in court.

The judge threw out all but one of the blog posts cited, focusing on just one (this one), which was more factual in tone than the rest of her writing. Cox said that was because she was being fed information from an inside source, whom she refused to name.

Read on

http://mashable.com/2011/12/07/blogger-vs-journalist/

Should bloggers have the same sorts of protections that journalists receive? Sound off.

Well. I can't say I agree with what happened, but she had way too much faith in our justice system to represent herself. Especially after being issued a cease and desist from someone with deep pockets.

Agreed there, definitely. I'm afraid movies make it seem easy to represent yourself and win.

I could barely read her article. She has some kind of half-assed initial caps thing going on there. She oughta be ordered to pay vision damages too.

I don't really like much of anything that impinges on our freedom of speech, but false defamation of character isn't exactly cool either. You're definitely right though Dat. She was foolish to try to represent herself.

I'll also say she shouldn't have represented herself.

I have a problem with this in that it's a VERY fine line between repressing first amendment rights and trying to enforce defamation laws. If the dude is corrupt, and MANY of the higher ups in financial institutions are, then they absolutely should be exposed. The woman should have revealed her source, privately, in front of a Grand Jury. This way it could be made known that her statements may or may not have been pure conjecture and factually based.

This is another example of those that have money can control the system to punish others IMO.

Free Speech is dead here for the most part in America these days. Between having to be "politically correct" and other stuff it's getting a little out of control.

Also, THIS. An American, on US soil, got arrested for posting on his blog something about the King of Thailand (when he visited Thailand of course he was arrested). As far as I know our government isn't fighting to get him back. Ugh.

I think it sets a bad precedent. What if Siren gets an exclusive story and it's not a nice one? What if a CEO or even the company she writes about, decides to go after her in court? Because she's a game blogger and not affiliated with the 'correct' affiliations, it's not out of the realm of possibilities that it could happen to her.

That's what I'm worried about.

I think it sets a bad precedent.

A LOT of bad precedents are being set right now in our lifetimes PK.

I also don't like the whole "you can't sue us ever" clause that Sony added to the PS3 and now all the companies are hopping on the bandwagon.

I'm not too worried about Siren though. She would kick some CEO as.s in a heartbeat. LoL

Yep. Microsoft just added it to their newest update.

Yep. Microsoft just added it to their newest update.

Yeah, that's why I brought it up. Makes me facepalm.

My MS app wouldn't work until I got on .com and accepted the agreement.

As for the case it's a bad precedent for sure but she was issued a chance to stop making the comments. Which she wrote another article refusing and making it worse.

Not to mention those press protection laws are upheld by the attorneys behind most of the large press companies.

It sucks but you do have to consider defamation laws. Again, I think she would have won or walked away with a much smaller fine if she would not have represented herself. Hell with the right attorney she could have helped set the precedent in the other favor.

I think it's all nonsense. Companies being immune to class action lawsuits because they make you click a little button. Corporations suing you for saying something bad about them. No such thing as free speech anymore.