MLRC Institute: Actions Against Online Speech

This list, maintained by the MLRC Institute, lists incidences in the United States in which online speech is threatened, whether through libel suits, criminal investigations, or other means. If you know of something we missed, please let us know. For more details on this list, see “Notes and Sources” below.

Hunt v. Patten, No. 2006 CA 002857 SC (Fla. Cir. Ct., Sarasota County filed March 29, 2006).
Status: Pending.


Former Venice, Fla. city manager sued veniceflorida.com writer John Patten, alleging that Patten helped spread lies about him that led him to be fired from the Venice, Fla.position and have kept him from getting a similar job elsewhere.

Links and Court Documents:

http://www.citmedialaw.org/hunt-v-patten
http://www.venicegondolier.com/NewsArchive3/033106/tp1vn6.htm
http://www.venicegondolier.com/Newsstory.cfm?pubdate=070407&story=tp2vn5.htm&folder=NewsArchive3
http://www.veniceflorida.com/features/pleaforhelp.htm
http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060409/COLUMNIST36/604090344/-1/COLUMNIST
Complaint: http://www.veniceflorida.com/features/pdf/HuntVsPattenComplaint.pdf
Docket: http://www.clerk.co.sarasota.fl.us/srqapp/civdetail.asp?tb_searchfor=2006+CA+002857+SC&tb_searchby=Case+Number&cb_search=Search
Last updated by Eric on 4/06/2009
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Labels: Libel, Pending, Public official

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NOTES AND SOURCES

How current is this list? The date of the latest revisions to each entry is given. While we try to keep this list up-to-date, links and information may have changed. Please let us know of any additions, changes or corrections.

Cases on this list have been discovered through MLRC research, news reports, legal databases such as Westlaw and Lexis, and from organizations such as The Citizen Media Law Project; Electronic Frontier Foundation; the Media Bloggers Association; and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

Defining a blog: Since the list mainly consists of cases based on the content of blogs, it leads to the question, what is a blog? For our purposes a blog is a web site that is created by and features periodic postings (comments, links, etc.) by an individual or a small group of contributors, usually on a specific topic or theme. (This includes individual pages within a larger site, such as blogger or MySpace.)

Blogs differ from forums, which are generally maintained by an operator who generally does not regularly contribute material to the site, but maintains and edits a web site that is open to postings from anyone. (If the person or people contributing material is also the editor(s), it is more likely a blog than a forum.) The timing of updates to a blog can vary, but must not be so infrequent that the site is more properly classified as a static web site. This definition leads to a sort of “you know it when you see it” quality; but given the shifting nature of the web technology and its uses, this is simply the best we’ve been able to come up with for now.


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