Someone needs to re-watch Absence of Malice.
So if I post on FB “Kaslin (real name) is a convicted child abuser” you think that should not be actionable?
CNN Breaking News: “Trump eliminates freedom of speech. Details at 7pm.”
On a humorous note, my wife employs blackmail everlasting times a week. As in every time I’m out of line she starts reminding me of every past misdeed until I give in to her demands. So do my children. Woe is me.
The only issue with libel, slander, is that you must go to court to clear you name. This takes $$ and as in the case of Gov Palin, the expense can be so disruptive and expensive one is unable to function in one’s duties or is bankrupted pursuing justice. The law should allow the victim to recover all expenses plus serious damages upon winning the case and include jail time for the libelous/slanderer.
“Does one’s reputation belong to him?”
Reputation is what we all have.
I don’t really believe Williams can believe what he just wrote.
“Were it made a question, whether no law, as among the savage Americans, or too much law, as among the civilized Europeans, submits man to the greatest evil, one who has seen both conditions of existence would pronounce it to be the last; and that the sheep are happier of themselves, than under care of the wolves.”
—Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia Q.XI, 1782. ME 2:129
Not correct, Mr. Williams. Your perception and subsequent impression are yours, but the reputation is based entirely upon the company/person in question. This is a legal definition that provides that the public at large have demonstrated a level of trust in a person or organization.
I must disagree, and assume that "noncoercive" here means only that a gun isn't being pointed at me, that I'm not being dangled over the roof of a 10-story building, etc. "Give me $10,000 and I will not ruin your business" is certainly more like "Give me $10,000 and I will not shoot you" than "Give me $10,000 and I will give you the car I'm advertising on Craigslist".
One of the few times I disagree with Walter Williams - maybe if someone would start spreading word he is a closet child molester, and it resulted in him being hounded out of his community and being ostracized from the places he likes to go, he would have to change his mind...
It sounds like jumping from the frying pan into the fire.
Truth belongs to everybody. It may not be wise to take Donald Trump’s proposal past the realm of rhetoric. But to de-sanction any and all false witness as long as it’s not sworn before a government body is to slouch towards that state of mind, most common in primitive societies, that the craftiest and most cunning liar wins.
We stand for some slander/libel sanctions because we don’t want truth to be devalued to the vanishing point.
This kind of thinking brings us things like free trade... Economists can 'prove' with crystalline logic that free trade ultimately benefits everyone to the highest degree (on average), and is the best solution to world trade.
Never mind that it drives wealthy nations' wages down to the world wide average.
But generally speaking, it is beneficial, right? Have we not all enjoyed the last 30 years of wage stagnation?
Reputation is “The immediate jewel of my soul.”
What Iago had to say (if one can trust anything Iago has to say):
CASSIO
My reputation, my reputation! I’ve lost my reputation, the longest-living and truest part of myself! Everything else in me is just animal-like. Oh, my reputation, Iago, my reputation!
IAGO
As I am an honest man, I thought you had received some bodily wound. There is more sense in that than in reputation. Reputation is an idle and most false imposition, oft got without merit and lost without deserving. You have lost no reputation at all unless you repute yourself such a loser. What, man, there are ways to recover the general again. You are but now cast in his mood, a punishment more in policy than in malice, even so as one would beat his offenseless dog to affright an imperious lion. Sue to him again and he’s yours.
And later:
“Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,
Is the immediate jewel of their souls:
Who steals my purse steals trash; ’tis something, nothing;
’twas mine, ’tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him,
And makes me poor indeed.”
The purpose of the act of slander and libel is to promote Mob Rule and motivate others to destroy the target finally provoking murder.
There MUST be serious punishment for this serious crime against another person to deter this tactic.
The pen IS mightier than the sword, and is a more deadly weapon.
False Witness should ALWAYS be punished most severely.
Libel and slander committed for profit, or for the destruction of the person in question, both require knowledge that the statements made are untrue. For “public figures”, I believe the standard includes a phrase like “actual malice”.
The issue with the last part of that standard is that the courts have made proving actual malice almost impossible.
Knowingly promoting falsehoods against a person, public or private, needs to remain illegal IMO. To do otherwise is to allow any scandalous pronouncement to unknowing recipients to destroy a person.
Let’s say I have a good reputation as a businessman, and I am working to secure a contract with a prospective client. A competitor, also desiring the contract, makes knowingly false statements alleging dishonesty on my part to the client, or in a way where the client hears about them second-hand. The client walks away, based on the known lie.
How can this scenario be interpreted that no harm is done? That is the issue - that a person may knowingly use lies to injure another person. Absent strong but balanced libel and slander laws, there is no recourse to solve the issue (being that physical confrontation would break other laws).
The libel and slander laws are fine.
What we need is “loser pays” to reduce
frivolous, blackmailing lawsuits.