... and won't be entitled to shield laws.
N.J. court rules blogger is not protected under shield law in porn company defamation case. A blogger sued for defamation because of her writings about a Freehold software company is not a journalist and is not covered by a law that protects them from revealing confidential sources, an appellate court ruled today.
In a decision that attempts to better define who is protected by New Jersey’s shield law, the court said Shellee Hale’s writings about Too Much Media LLC, which supplies software to online pornography websites, amounted to nothing more than a letter-to-the-editor in a newspaper. Hale, a former Microsoft employee and a mother of five from Washington state, contended she was acting as a journalist when she posted comments to a message board about a security breach at TMM and allegations that its owners had threatened her. She argued the postings were part of her research into a larger story about the online pornography industry.
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Not sure how I feel about this. While I can see that we can't just arbitrarily slam or accuse someone in our postings without supporting proof, I do feel we should be able to use the "freedom of speech" approach to what we write about. Your thoughts?
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