Bartholemews’ Notes on Religion:
American Buddhist blogger Precious Metal has received an unwelcome missive by email from UK libel specialist law-firm Carter-Ruck:
“We act for the Buddhist monks William Van Gordon and Edo Shonin and write in connection with an article entitled “A Mother’s grief: ‘The cult guru who turned my son into a zombie’” that was published by the Daily Mail on 25 May 2007 and which is also published by you…
The article contains a number of false and highly defamatory allegations of both our clients and has caused considerable damage to their reputation. We write to give you formal notice that we have issued High Court proceedings for defamation on behalf of our clients against the publishers of the Daily Mail and ask you to remove the article from your website as a matter of real urgency. The article has been removed from the Daily Mail’s own website.”
And the response?
Unless I receive a letter directly from a court/judge telling me to take the article down then it will remain online here. Under US law, as long as sources are named and I don’t edit the original article, I am protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution. So the original article, which was published on May 25 , 2007 by the Daily Mail (auther Jenny Johnston) is below…
…here.
It’d be nice if we had a libel law something like that, wouldn’t it? *sighs dreamily*
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