[ih] Defamation lawsuit brought by self-proclaimed email "inventor" settles

[jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)]

    > From: Richard Bennett

    > Masnick's claim that Huffington Post published material damaging to
    > "its journalistic integrity"

But those articles _would_ damage the journalistic reputation of a news
organization which published them. (I'm going to avoid the rathole of
whether HuffPo has any journalistic reputation.)

    > strongly suggests that Huffington Post should take actions to
    > restore said integrity

This is a real tar-pit. I get your point, but chastising the HuffPo can't
really be attacking _Ayyadurai_'s speech rights, but rather HuffPo's.

And pointing out someone's busted speech happens all the time, and while
such activity does implicitly call for a reaction from the attackee, i) it
doesn't on its own suggest what the reaction should be, and ii) does this
mean that _all_ such pointings-out are illegitimate (since by this
standard they're attacks on free speech)? If the latter, what _is_ the
appropriate response to someone saying, or publishing, something bogus?
Surely not silence!


I wonder to what degree Ayyadurai's campaign to get credit was just part of
the runup to his Senate campaign? If so, his defeat there is true karma.

	Noel