Two Australian bloggers facing legal issues arising from their blogs

It seems that a couple of local bloggers have found themselves in middle of legal issues arising from their blogging activities.

Blogger #1
Cairns Blog has being requested by Kevin Byrne, the Mayor of the City of Cairns, to apologise and remove this blog post or be sued for damages caused by the alleged defamation.

There has been three follow up posts by Cairns Blog explaining everything further and appealing for funds to help fight the legal action.
- Donate to our fighting fund
- We still need your financial support
- Censorship and posting

Blogger #2
Duncan Riley is being theatened with legal action after he wrote a blog post and video review about his poor shopping experience at My Mac Australia.

Duncan has published the business owners communication which states that they are looking to have the video and blog posts removed as well as compensation for lost business that may have resulted.

I remember reading and watching Duncan’s review at the time it was first published thinking that he definitely had rights to feel that he was an aggrieved party in the transaction so it is kind of disappointing to see it come to this.

Because political discussion and consumers reviews feature quite heavily in the local blogosphere, both cases will be interesting to watch to see what the implications are for bloggers. Not being legal expert I won’t bother speculating on how either of these situations will play out. But I do wish luck to both bloggers and hope you come out of the situations favorably.

People wanting to read some more on legal issues arising from blogging should go to Club Troppo which has a comprehensive post Feeling lucky? Bloggers and defamation liability as does Larvatus Prodeo with Defamation and the Internet.

Also of interest is Accidental Aussie’s notes from the Legal Issues and Blogs session from the recent Australian Blogging Conference.

Many of the top Australian bloggers host their blogs on U.S. supported blogging software/sites to avoid potential legal liabilities that are more prone to occur in Australia due to the lack of provisions protecting them in their country.

Apparently copyright laws in Australia are more restrictive than in the United States.

It was also brought up that Australia has no concrete provision similar to the 1st Amendment of the United States, which protects all citizens to the freedom of speech and or of the press.

Two key legal provisions that AU bloggers should be aware of when dealing with a defamation claim: notice and take down (you are notified about a defaming statement on your blog, and have the opportunity of taking it down to avoid legal course of action) and the provision to make amends with the defamed claimer.

The talented faculty at QUT Law’s Intellectual Property: Knowledge, Culture and Economy have published a number of helpful reports and papers on the use of electronic content in the digital age, for those looking for information on what is acceptable and unacceptable to copy, embed, download or distribute.