Thursday, November 10, 2005

Tom's 80,000 Defamatory Spaghetti Monsters

So I found a pretty interesting post over at our buddy Tom's site. In it he details an IM conversation he had with another Irish blogger. Basically, they this blogger had to remove posts from his site under threat of legal action. In reality, all the blogger was doing, was reporting what he was reading elsewhere in the press about a company, who had been sued for mistreatment of their employees. Yet, he had to pull the articles because he hasn't the resources to defend himself. Which, as Tom points out, begs the question, how many bloggers are out there happily posting everyday unaware of the potential threat of legal action? Which is all just my really long-winded way of drawing attention to Digital Rights Ireland, a group (quite possibly of superheroes) dedicated to defending Civil, Human and Legal rights in a digital age, who have produced a pamphlet with advice for bloggers and web hosts on libel and defamation.

This is fantastic, Bobby Henderson, the creator of The Flying Spaghetti Monster, has been given an $80,000 advance to write a Pastafarian Bible. “My hope is that readers won’t know if I’m trying to make a point about pseudoscience or if I’m a complete nut,” says Henderson. “I’ll be really disappointed if it doesn’t spawn a cult.” So will I.