anti-slapp laws – Techdirt (original) (raw)

Stories filed under: "anti-slapp laws"

Court Laughs Off OAN Conspiracy Network’s Claim It Was ‘Censored’ By DirecTV

from the opiate-of-the-very-gullible-masses dept

When last we checked in with One America News (OAN), it was trying (with the help of numerous Republican AGs) to pretend that DirecTV’s decision to boot the barely watched conspiracy network from its cable lineup was part of a vast, diabolical cabal to censor conservatives. The AG lawsuit filed last March pulls out the traditional “Conservatives are being censored” victimization complex:

“This is an action to redress the unchecked influence and power that Defendants have wielded in an attempt to unlawfully destroy an independent, family-run business and impede the right of American television viewers to watch the news media channels and programs of their choice.”

In reality, DirecTV executives simply didn’t think the channel was worth the trouble, so they didn’t renew OAN when the carriage agreement expired. Cable executives would air no limit of dangerous and unhinged gibberish if it made them money. But OAN’s viewership to headache and liability ratio was never a good mix for the already struggling satellite TV provider

A preliminary ruling by Judge John Meyer of California Superior Court in San Diego County shot down OAN’s breach of contract allegations, setting the stage for what’s expected to be a case dismissal. DirecTV filed an anti-SLAPP motion to strike the Herring Networks (OAN’s parent company) complaint, and DirecTV’s motion was granted in part and denied in part:

“As to the breach of the implied covenant claim, to the extent it is based on the non-renewal of the Affiliation Agreement, the claim fails because the agreement contains a fixed expiration date and no provision entitling Herring to a renewal.”

Despite making a lot of headlines for dangerous bullshit (like the idea COVID was crafted in a North Carolina lab), the news channel never really saw all that many actual viewers. One estimate pegged daily viewership at around 14,000 a few years ago, and that was before the channel got kicked off of DirecTV and Verizon, its biggest distributors.

Without its two major cable distributors, OAN’s now mired in a scrum for attention with an endless sea of far right wing conspiracy influencers and grifters on the Internet. While also fending off other much more notable lawsuits, including Smartmatic’s defamation lawsuit against One America News for spreading baseless election-fraud conspiracy theories.

Filed Under: anti-slapp, anti-slapp laws, conspiracy theories, election conspiracy, political propaganda, propaganda, right wing
Companies: directv, oan

About Time: NY Governor Cuomo Signs Anti-SLAPP Law

from the free-speech-comes-to-NY dept

Back in July, we noted that after years of living with a pathetically weak anti-SLAPP bill, the NY legislature had finally approved a more significant anti-SLAPP bill. It’s incredible that it has taken this long, given that much of the media industry is based in New York, and for so many years has been open to a barrage of ridiculous SLAPP suits, since the old law only covered speech made in the process of petitioning the government. Also, unlike most anti-SLAPP bills, New York’s did not have automatic fee shifting, which would make the vexatious litigant have to pay for the legal costs of the defendant.

For unclear reasons, the bill sat on Governor Andrew Cuomo’s desk unsigned for months. However, that finally ended yesterday as he has now signed the bill into law:

Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today signed legislation that protects citizens’ rights to free speech and petition by deterring abusive “strategic lawsuits against public participation,” known as SLAPPs. SLAPP lawsuits are frivolous litigation brought by affluent plaintiffs who have the ability to spend large sums of money by using expensive and time-consuming litigation to obstruct those exercising their right to free speech. The legislation amends the Civil Rights Law to require costs and attorney’s fees to be recovered regarding these frivolous lawsuits, which will deter plaintiffs from bringing such lawsuits in the first place.

“For too long, powerful and wealthy interests have used frivolous lawsuits to harass and intimidate critics by burdening them with exorbitant legal fees and time consuming legal processes. That ends now,” Governor Cuomo said. “I am proud to sign this legislation, which protects New Yorkers’ fundamental right to free speech without fear of harassment or bullying by those who happen to have more money than they do.”

It’s good to see yet another state improve their anti-SLAPP laws. There are still many states with no anti-SLAPP laws or weak ones — and there still is no federal anti-SLAPP law at all. It’s about time that the new Congress and a new President support such a law next year. Over the last four years, we’ve seen a massive flurry of SLAPP suits, designed to intimidate and suppress speech, even by thin-skinned members of Congress (one assumes Devin Nunes is a no vote on any federal anti-SLAPP law). Such a bill should receive overwhelming support in Congress and would protect the free expression rights of every American.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, andrew cuomo, anti-slapp, anti-slapp laws, defamation, free speech, new york, slapp

Romney Campaign's Finance Co-Chair Accused Of Being SLAPP-Happy

from the time-for-a-federal-anti-slapp-law dept

We’ve covered, repeatedly, the problems of people using SLAPP — Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation — lawsuits against people trying to speak their opinion. While some states have anti-SLAPP laws (with the quality of those laws being quite mixed), we still believe that we really need a strong federal anti-SLAPP law. If you’re not familiar with SLAPP lawsuits, they are lawsuits with little basis that are filed with the sole purpose of silencing someone who is speaking out in some manner.

Last week, Glenn Greenwald, over at Salon, went into tremendous detail in accusing Mitt Romney’s billionaire national finance co-chair, Frank VanderSloot (oddly, links to this page don’t seem to work, but if you go to Greenwald’s blog you can still get to it — at the same URL), of regularly using SLAPP-like suits or threats of SLAPP-like suits to silence critics. He lays out a number of examples, involving publications both big (Mother Jones, Forbes) and small (various small time bloggers). Unfortunately, it appears that many of those publications simply backed down, often removing the material entirely. You would think that publications like Forbes and Mother Jones would stand up to such actions, but they both took down the articles critical of VanderSloot, though Mother Jones eventually (a week or so later) posted a new version that was apparently edited to address the complaints.

VanderSloot is CEO of Melaleuca, which has been described as a multilevel marketing company. In that Forbes article, Melaleuca is described as a “a pyramid selling organization.” Elsewhere, in complaints to the government, it has been described as a “pyramid scheme.” VanderSloot and Melaleuca have argued, however, that it is not a “pyramid scheme.” He’s also been very politically active, not just in the Romney campaign, but various other political campaigns — including paying for billboards to speak out against the local PBS station showing a particular documentary about gay issues. Forbes recently used this story to suggest that VanderSloot was “a large contributor to a number of anti-homosexual causes.” That article has since been removed but copies can be found online. Greenwald also details a blog post by James Tidmarsh on the site IdahoAgenda, which claimed that VanderSloot “has a pretty solid anti-gay history in Idaho.” VanderSloot and his lawyers appear to take exception to such claims, and the Tidmarsh blog post has since been removed after he apparently received multiple communications pressuring him to take the post down or face consequences.

As we’ve seen in SLAPP cases we’ve looked at in the past, at times he uses copyright to try to threaten legal action — including in one case where his lawyers registered the copyright on a takedown letter they sent a blog, which they then used to claim infringement against the person who posted the letter on the site (to explain why the original blog post was removed). In that case, since it involved anonymous bloggers, VanderSloot’s company, Melaleuca also tried to issue subpoenas to identify the bloggers. Similarly, they apparently claimed copyright infringement in a letter to a blogger who made use of a VanderSloot corporate headshot — a common practice, and one for which there is at least some legal precedence for fair use (and that threatening over such uses can be seen as a SLAPP attempt).

We’ve seen many similar cases, but Greenwald lays out so many similar stories involving VanderSloot and Melaleuca (many with detailed citations), that I’m kind of surprised that we hadn’t come across these before. Either way, you can tell that Greenwald (who is a lawyer) was quite careful in drafting his writeup, most likely expecting at least some pushback. He also highlights the cause of one blogger, Jody May-Chang, who does not seem to want to back down against VanderSloot, after having received a letter (pdf) recently about an old blog post (for which it’s likely any defamation claim is long past the statute of limitations).

Once again, stories like these really highlight the need for a strong and clear federal anti-SLAPP law. It would certainly be interesting for someone in the political press to ask Mitt Romney for his position on a federal anti-SLAPP law, given his relationship with VanderSloot. Either way, I feel it’s a shame that we don’t have such a strong federal anti-SLAPP law in place already. Such a law would go a long way towards protecting basic First Amendment principles. I’m always most amazed at the rich and powerful using these types of tactics (see: Snyder, Dan) not just because such people are public figures (where the bar for any defamation claim is significantly higher), but because you would think that, having gotten to such a level, they’d be secure enough in their arguments that having random publications snipe at them should be of little concern.

Filed Under: anti-slapp laws, frank vandersloot, glenn greenwald, mitt romney, slapp