Insurance For Bloggers?

(With a hat-tip to Cube)

Freedom of speech: Use it or lose it.

Freedom of speech: Use it or lose the war of ideas.

From this article in the Christian Science Monitor:

...“We’re coming up with a product that covers defamation, copyright, privacy violations – the same protections as newspapers – for bloggers,” says the group’s Mr. Cox. [Media Bloggers Association] members will receive a hefty discount on the insurance package, due to be launched at the end of this month. The cheapest coverage for a solo blogger will be $540 a year....

Why would bloggers need insurance? According to the article:

The blogging community increasingly is subject to lawsuits and threats of legal action running the gamut from subpoenas to cease-and-desist notices. Since blogging became popular in about 2004, there have been 159 civil and criminal court actions involving bloggers, according to the nonprofit Media Law Resource Center (MLRC) in New York. Seven cases have resulted in verdicts against bloggers, with cumulative penalties totaling $18.5 million. Many more legal actions never result in trial.

[...]

Bloggers faced with legal threats often deem it easier to remove potentially offensive content rather than undertake the difficulty and expense of defending themselves...

In the United States, of course, we have a broad definition of freedom of speech:

Bloggers face much bigger threats overseas, particularly if they criticize governments or point to human rights abuses.

Since 2003, 64 bloggers have been arrested around the world – with Egypt, China, and Iran initiating more than half of those arrests, according to the World Information Access Report, published last month by the University of Washington. By contrast, the United States has arrested two in that period.

Still, online commentators face risks in the United States.

“In the developed world, bloggers can be punished through lawsuits,” writes Philip Howard, a communications professor at the University of Washington, in an e-mail.

The number of lawsuits is growing, says Robert Cox, president of the Media Bloggers Association (MBA), a US-based group devoted to protecting citizen journalists. “As blogging expands and more people are aware of it, the lawyers are not far behind.”

The article begins with an anecdote as to how a personal comment left on a blog led to litigation. Read the entire article HERE.