Preliminary Thoughts on Defamation

Posted by Diana Hsieh on 16 October 2012 at 12:00 pm Defamation, Free Speech, Justice, Law, Rights

Oct 162012

Last week, I was chatting with my friend Santiago about the validity of defamation laws. Just to get everyone on the same page, Wikipedia summarizes defamation as follows:

Defamation — also called calumny, vilification, traducement, slander (for transitory statements), and libel (for written, broadcast, or otherwise published words) — is the communication of a statement that makes a claim, expressly stated or implied to be factual, that may give an individual, business, product, group, government, religion, or nation a negative or inferior image.

I’m particularly interested in this topic because I have a question on it in the Philosophy in Action Queue that I’d like to answer sooner rather than later. Here’s my current thinking on the matter, and I’d be interested in people’s thoughts in response.

I can understand that a person might be deeply distraught to be harassed by people telling bald-faced lies about him, particularly when that costs him well-earned business. I can understand the desire to recover damages for those losses. However, even if a person should be able to do that, I’m doubtful that defamation should be a legally actionable tort in a free society. Why?

First, defamation laws are too often used as a weapon to silence criticism — meaning, to violate free speech rights. If a person dislikes the criticisms of others — even if those criticisms are completely justified by the facts — he can can sue (or threaten to sue) others into silence. Alas, I have personal experience with such abuses. The cost in time, money, and anxiety of defending yourself against a false claim of defamation is ginormous.

The fact that defamation lawsuits — or the threat thereof — silence speech important for living life should be deeply troubling. People should be free to speak out about their experiences with incompetent doctors, shady contractors, dishonest businesses, and the like without fear of legal reprisals. Such speech is critical to living life well, yet under defamation laws, people engage in such speech at their peril.

Second, if a person unjustly attacks your reputation, defending yourself is almost always pretty easy. You simply have to say that the person is mistaken or lying, then state the facts. (Many staunch defenders of defamation laws are unwilling to do that, I’ve found: they see themselves as above any such explanations to the unwashed masses.) You can also ask forums hosting the defamatory speech to remove it or not permit more of it. Sure, some people will believe the lies, but most people worth knowing or dealing with will not just swallow them. Reasonable people will listen to you. I know that from far too much personal experience too.

Third, notwithstanding those practical conerns, the critical question about the validity of defamation laws concerns the nature and scope of rights. To wit: Does a person have a right to a factually accurate reputation?

A person’s reputation is the sum of the judgments that others make of him: it’s “the beliefs or opinions that are generally held about someone or something.” As such, a person cannot be entitled to a certain reputation by right. A person can influence his reputation by his words and deeds, but it’s not his property because ultimately, a person’s reputation consists of judgments in the minds of others. It’s their property, in fact.

Certainly, some people believe ridiculous claims about me — yet they’re not violating my rights in doing so. They’re just jerks or chumps, but hey, that’s their right. I don’t have a right to anyone’s good opinion, even if that’s what I deserve morally. People are entitled to believe whatever they damn well please — and, I think, to say pretty much whatever they damn well please too. Yes, that speech might do me damage, but so does the speech of pastors and politicians.

Ultimately, I don’t see any basis for claims of a right to reputation. Hence, at least right now, I don’t see that defamation laws can be justified.

Thoughts?

http://www.facebook.com/kyle.haight Kyle Haight

One might argue, particularly in the case of business relationships, that defamation is a form of fraud. Turn it around… suppose that I go around praising Bob’s integrity, honesty and acumen to the skies while knowing that he’s a scoundrel. You, relying on the accuracy of my testimony, enter into a business arrangement with Bob that you would not have had I not deceived you. That might be considered fraud on my part, especially if I were doing it with malicious intent. And if using lies to inflate someone’s reputation is fraud, then using lies to deflate someone’s reputation might be as well.

Granted, I’ve given this all of 5 minutes of thought, so poke holes!
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000536747848 Jennifer Snow

@Kyle–it’d only *potentially* be fraud if you were receiving a monetary kickback for your opinion.

I’d say, if you’re going to turn it around, ask this question: is there any form of speech, no matter how motivated, that can actually violate someone’s rights, damage their life, liberty, or property? I’d say, yes there is, but only in an extremely limited context: lying to law enforcement officials about you. If someone calls the police and gives a tip that they think you’re making bombs in your garage and you get raided, your door gets broken down, your belongings impounded, you get taken down the police station . . . I think there ought to be some kind of option for legal restitution. Negative attention from the police isn’t always some minor inconvenience.

Other than that, though, no matter what people say about you they aren’t violating your rights and the facts are still available for anyone to see.
- Dismuke
  
  “I’d say, if you’re going to turn it around, ask this question: is there any form of speech, no matter how motivated, that can actually violate someone’s rights, damage their life, liberty, or property? I’d say, yes there is, but only in an extremely limited context: lying to law enforcement officials about you.”
  
  Freedom of speech is a strictly GOVERNMENTAL and IDEOLOGICAL matter. Freedom of speech is freedom of conscious. It is the freedom to form any sort of JUDGEMENT, OPINION, EVALUATION or BELIEF and to express it. It is a prohibition against the government from criminalizing IDEAS and the expression of IDEAS.
  
  ONLY the government can violate another person’s freedom of speech. Defamation is an entirely CIVIL matter.
  
  The only RIGHT a person has with regard to speech in a civil context is to his OPINIONS and EVALUATIONS – and, even then, he only has a right to assert them on his own property or on the property of someone else who is willing to allow him to do so.
  
  Asserting that a restaurant is “yucky and has the worst food and service I have ever had” is very different than asserting that a dozen customers have been hospitalized as a result of eating food prepared there in unsanitary conditions, that the owner is a neo Nazi who spits in the food of African American and Jewish customers and has a peep hole that he uses to spy on customers who use the ladies restroom.
  
  “Other than that, though, no matter what people say about you they aren’t violating your rights and the facts are still available for anyone to see. “
  
  Really? Let’s say that you have been engaging in intellectual activism and have ticked off some Ellsworth Toohey type at a local television station who decides that you need to be nipped in the bud. Let’s say that the local TV station runs a story about how you hate black people and that it has incontrovertible evidence that you used to attend meetings of the Ku Klux Klan – and they even show your picture on TV. Now it is the next morning and you wake up with egg splattered on your front door and your tires slashed. When you run errands on your way to work, people on the street and in shops recognize your face and give you a filthy look and tell you what an evil, rotten person you are. And when you get to the brand new job you recently started, your boss – who happens to be black – demands to know what is going on. Let’s say that he actually believes you – it still doesn’t do much good because the company is inundated with angry phone calls and several important customers have threatened to take their business elsewhere unless you are terminated. Now you find yourself out of a job, hated by total strangers and are starting to question your own personal safety – all for something you have never done.
  
  And you say that your rights have not been, in some way, violated?
  
  No, you don’t have any sort of inherent right for people to think well of you. That is something you must earn. But this is different. Here, people hate you because of something you have NEVER done – because of a total LIE that someone has deliberately and intentionally spread for the specific purpose of destroying your life and your future.
  
  You say that the “facts are available for anyone to see”? Really? WHAT FACTS? There ARE NO FACTS. The whole thing is FABRICATED. But, you may say, the burden of proof rests with the person making the assertion. So what? The damage has already been done. There are lots of people who are intellectually lazy and many more who are too ignorant of logic to have even heard of the concept of burden of proof. And they all now think you are a racist – and they are acting accordingly. And even if you think that your powers of persuasion are such that you can make people understand that the charges are arbitrary – by what means do you even have to communicate with the tens of thousands of people who watched the slander? It is not like the TV station is obliged to give you air time – especially since you claim that your rights have not been violated. And perhaps the other TV stations in the market are either indifferent to your plight or are perhaps under the influence of the same Ellsworth Toohey who planted the lies in the first place. And even if you do manage to find some venue to address the charges – the station says it has “incontrovertible evidence.” Who are people going to be inclined to believe – a “respectable” news organization that has been around for decades or some “nobody” who, up until now, few people had ever even heard of?
  
  When you state an opinion, you are making something known about YOURSELF. If I call you a “fool” or a “crackpot” it is very obvious I am making a statement about MY evaluation – which I have a right to make and speak however absurd it might be. If I assert that you used to be a member of the KKK, I am making a FACTUAL claim – in this case a factual claim that is intentionally false for the express purpose of causing you damage and harm. I do NOT have a right to make such a claim. And your taking me to court over it does NOT violate my “freedom of speech.” Only the government can violate my freedom of speech. In this case, the role of the government is merely to mediate a private grievance.
  
  Every private citizen is responsible for his own private BEHAVIOR – and behavior includes speech. If one has been materially injured by another person’s behavior, the victim has a right to sue for damages. When it comes to speech, there are cases where one does NOT have legal recourse even if one has been damaged. If the other person is speaking the TRUTH and, as a result, there are negative consequences to one’s person or business there is no recourse. One does not have a right to an alternative reality. If the other person is expressing an OPINION and, as a result, there are negative consequences, one does not have legal recourse. People are entitled to their opinions – and they are just that, mere opinions. But to knowingly present a falsehood as being FACT in order to defame and destroy another person or organization, that is a from of fraud – a fraud not for the purpose of obtaining a value but of destroying a value. To say that this isn’t a legal matter is the same as suggesting that theft of one’s property is a legal issue but that vandalism of one’s property is not.
  - http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000536747848 Jennifer Snow
    
    Is there a reason why you’re being a huge dick?
    
    In any case, I’ve seen plenty of smear campaigns, thank you. And I’ve seen them backfire. The fact that you don’t know how to deal with people saying garbage about you doesn’t mean you have the right to force them not to talk.
    
    A reputation is not property. It is neither defined nor finite–nor does anyone have fundamental control over it. If you can’t control it, you don’t own it, and nobody has a responsibility to refrain from screwing with it. To the extent that they can screw with it, anyway.
    
    And if you’re so hysterical about it, here’s a question for you: if you run a restaurant, which is more cost-effective? 1.) refuting claims that you have a filthy kitchen by inviting people to come see for themselves or 2.) hiring a lawyer and suing? It’s been my experience in the business world that 1.) is always the case–heck, you’ll probably wind up with MORE business after the fact because now thousands of people who’d never heard of your restaurant before know your name.
    
    Heck, there was a particularly nasty one of these when I worked at the tissue bank because some idiotic news network ran this “horror” story about some completely unrelated tissue harvesting company in New York, I think it was, who ZOMG was taking people’s bones and REPLACING THEM WITH PVC PIPE. It was kind of hilarious at the time because this is actually the standard good practice. The BAD part was that they hadn’t waited to get consent before harvesting the bones, but this network went NUTS about the PVC pipe. And we got a spike in donations because people who’d never heard about this kind of tissue donation before were looking into it.
    
    Heck, I might even try to manufacture a vendetta with some prominent jerk if I were a nonentity with no media access trying to get some attention.
    - c_andrew
      
      Jennifer,
      
      Giving Dismuke his due, I don’t think that he is being a “huge dick.” He is being passionate about his principles and how they apply to a difficult topic. When he writes “you” I believe he is speaking generally rather than specifically to you.
      
      Ultimately, I think that this question is going to revolve around the virtue of justice and how that aspect of morality applies to individual rights as they should be protected in the legal system.
      
      William Stoddard wrote: When you look at the conditions where defamation laws developed, you can see reasons that people might have wanted them badly. Many of the things they refer to were hard to prove or disprove objectively, or exposed you to legal measures that had little element of objectivity. Claim that someone is a leper, or a heretic, in the middle ages, or later that they are a sodomite or a syphilitic, and you have at least made them likely to be shunned, if not harshly punished; such claims were a deadly weapon, and the person who made them without the most careful regard for their truth was a threat—it would be too easy for a group of people to ruin each other by telling such lies. So we have laws that forbid saying or printing things that destroy a person’s good name with other people . . . if such things are not true.
      
      Dismuke wrote; Bottom line: ANY material misrepresentation of the facts about a product, person or organization for the purpose of deceiving anther person into taking actions he would not have normally undertaken had the facts not been misrepresented is a form of FRAUD
      
      Jennifer, I don’t think that limiting defamation to lying to police officers is sufficient. What happens if false information is bruited about and that leads to state or police action to your detriment or even physical harm? Are those purveying false assertions of fact blameless in the outcome? I don’t think so.
      
      I think, particularly in the current climate, that being “exposed … to legal measures that [have] little element of objectivity” is in fact a direct violation of your rights. If you need some objective proof of that, take a look at the new home of Injustice Everywhere or any one of a number of entries in Radley Balko’s blog, the Agitator.
      
      I like William Stoddard’s invocation of the common law in this instance. While the common law has had some serious flaws in it, it does provide instances of rules, integrated over time, that gives something of an inductive approach to the question. I’m not saying, as some of the paleo-conservatives or Burkean types assert, that such institutions, modified over time, are the best that men can do but I don’t think we can justifiy dismissing the concrete instances they encode in favor of a purely deductive approach to the problem.
      
      For instance, a friend of mine was dismissed from his job by a building subcontractor because the owner of the business was a Christian and he found out that my friend was an atheist. Because he knew that such an action would very likely render him open to action at law (even though my friend would not have pursued such a course) he began putting it about that my friend was a homosexual drug user and HIV positive. He couldn’t understand why he was being turned down on jobs he was qualified for until a friend of his in the trades called him and told him that J**** was badmouthing him as … a homosexual drug user who was HIV positive to all of the contractors and subcontractors that he interacted with. When my friend confirmed this by calling a contractor that he knew, he called his former employer and asked him to stop. He did not. So my friend went to a lawyer and had him send a “cease and desist” letter with the explicit proviso that they would sue for defamation with damages upon any further utterance of the slanderous speech. That quashed it.
      
      Absent such a remedy, what would you propose that he do? A mass mailing to all contractors and subcontractors with a certified reproduction of his test results establishing that he was in fact drug and HIV free? Are you saying then, that a man must prove his innocence in the face of arbitrary or false things said about him? Are we justifiied in inverting the onus of proof in these instances on the basis of “free speech?”
      
      I don’t think so.
      
      I think that Dismuke’s comparison to medical malpractice laws is a good model to begin with on this subject. And Mr. Stoddard’s point about the common law should also be considered.
      - William H Stoddard
        
        I’m glad that you found my discussion of the common law useful. I don’t take the common law as automatically having the right answers to legal or moral questions; but I think its principles are worth considering in trying to find the right answers to such questions, because it gets a lot of things right.
        
        Your discussion suggests to me a more principled approach that I had not thought of before:
        
        Ayn Rand discusses, in one of her essays, the difference between “philosophically objective” value (meaning the value something has for the best human beings, or for a fully rational being) and “socially objective” value (meaning the value something has for the human beings who actually exist, as reflected for example in market prices). It occurs to me that there may be a similar distinction to be made about law. On one hand, we can envision a society of rational beings, in which any irrationality is rare, and ask what laws would be necessary or useful to such a society. On the other hand, we can ask what laws are appropriate to a society of human beings as they are, to enable them to live the most rational and productive lives possible.
        
        In a society of fully rational beings, saying “he’s a heretic” or “she has syphilis” or “he’s HIV-positive” would have no effect: As an unproven assertion it would just be dismissed. In a society where many people are imperfectly rational and some are virulently irrational, it may lead to shunning, to legal penalties, or even to mob violence. For example, a rabble-rousing speech in Galt’s Gulch would find no rabble to rouse, but in an American city it might make someone the target of a lynch mob. So a fully rational society might see no need for laws against incitement to riot—because no one would respond to such incitement—but our society probably needs such laws.
        
        For such laws to be even “socially objective,” of course, there has to be a boundary around what statements are sufficiently harmful to constitute a real threat. We don’t want the category so broadly drawn that it justifies laws against blasphemy, for example! This is the kind of issue that Ayn Rand described as making the philosophy of law an enormously complex field. It’s complex enough so that I don’t claim to know the right answer; I just would want to see the common law concerns about defamation discussed in arriving at an answer.
      - c_andrew
        
        William, That is an interesting idea that a more rational society would be less likely to require nit-picking laws to protect individual rights. I’m going to have to think on that a spell. I think that there are societies where the attempt to transplant a rights’ respecting governance is doomed to fail because they lack the cultural infrastructure for it; look at the governance of most of the former British colonies. They rarely achieved the same level of rights-respecting lawfulness after independence than they had as a British possession. But I, for one, don’t think it is in any nation’s best interest to take up the burden of colonialism as we were exhorted to by Rudyard Kipling. I bring this up because I think that it is an example, in the opposite direction, of what you are referring to in your question. And we have some historical data to look at in evaluating it. But that is a very intriguing question. Thanks for posing it.
      - William H Stoddard
        
        In Kipling’s “As Easy as A.B.C.,” there’s a passage where Kipling describes the abolition of newspapers in the outlying Chicago district—because newspapers can lead to printed news about private individuals, which leads to invasion of privacy, which leads to crowds, which lead to democracy and lynchings. Apparently Chicago is a bit extreme for his future world, and we see later in the story that they still have problems with democracy. Of course Kipling had spent much of his life in India.
        
        On the other hand, though India has had a lot of problems, they’re astonishingly better off than most of the former colonial states. They have an elected government, not a one-party dictatorship; they have enough of a market economy to be able to modernize and integrate with the global economy, though it took them a long time; they have violence and civil disorder but I don’t think they’ve ever been close to mass murder by the state. So they’re one partial testimonial to British rule. Singapore might be another, for that matter. Though of course there are some disastrous governments in formerly British regions too.
      - c_andrew
        
        I imagine that if Hong Kong had been made autonomous instead of handed over to the Communist regime, they probably would have been another and perhaps better example of British influence.
        
        To me, it looks like the difference is found in whether the pre-colonial tribal or religious influences displace whatever the British left behind vs whether a signficant number of intellectual leaders supported at least some part of the Western influence. In India’s case, I think that Gandhi’s influence was crucial.
        
        In Africa I think tribal influences predominated except in those areas with significant muslim populations. I think Kenya is relatively stable as opposed to Zimbabwe although I’m not sure that falls under a direct transition from colonialism because I believe Rhodesia was an independent Commonwealth member before majority rule converted the nation into essentially a dictatorship.
        
        I’d forgotten about “As Easy as ABC” which is the only foray (to my knowledge) that Kipling made into what arguably was science fiction.
        
        The disorder and civil unrest in India is mostly a result of Muslims and historical caste divisions, is it not? Although it was the Sikh bodyguard that killed Indhira Gandhi, so maybe it isn’t exclusively so.
      - William H Stoddard
        
        Actually, there’s another story set in the same timeline some decades earlier, “With the Night Mail” (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/29135/29135-h/29135-h.htm). It’s not as powerful as “As Easy as A.B.C.,” but it’s enjoyable reading, with more technical details on Kipling’s imagined airships—and, interestingly, its original publication was accompanied by a simulated news magazine of the future, complete with classified advertisements and letters to the editor! If you haven’t seen it before you might enjoy it.
      - c_andrew
        
        Thanks, William. I’ve downloaded it from gutenberg and will read it at my leisure.
      - Dismuke
        
        “In a society of fully rational beings, saying “he’s a heretic” or “she has syphilis” or “he’s HIV-positive” would have no effect: As an unproven assertion it would just be dismissed”
        
        Actually, I am inclined to think the exact opposite is true. If you are in the company of people who you believe to be rational you will be MORE inclined to take their say-so on things. And we all DO take people’s say so on things – we do all the time. How many times have you been inclined to try or avoid a business based solely upon someone’s say so? And how many times have you kept your distance from someone you don’t know very well based on damning testimony about his character from someone you do know well? Nobody has the time to investigate and fact check every assertion we hear or accept – assuming the means to do so is even available to us.
        
        The fact is that we all accept certain things based on nothing more than say-so of those who we consider to have credibility. And one might be surprised just to what degree we do so from sources that we DON’T necessarily have a high opinion of. Do you place a lot of trust in the credibility of the New York Times? Probably not. They have a long history of distorting things and using techniques such as context dropping and cherry picking facts in order to promote a certain ideological agenda. So whenever you read a story in that paper with political ramifications, you probably have your guard up and your BS meter set on “high.” But when you read a story somewhere in the back pages of the New York Times that a person has been convicted by a jury for armed robbery or was placed on probation for drunk driving chances are you just assume it is correct because there is no apparent ideological motive – plus the fact that the paper could be sued for a fortune for defamation if it just made up and reported something like that. Indeed, it is BECAUSE of the media’s credibility on factual hard news stories that people are taken in by its deceptions on stories that have an ideological slant. So let’s say your new, seemingly nice next door neighbor mentions that he/she would like to earn some extra money on the side through babysitting and you just happen to be in the market for a babysitter. So after the conversation, you decide to take a few first steps towards due diligence and google the person’s name only to discover in an archived article of a major newspaper stories of arrests and convictions for serious offenses. Are you likely to bring this to the person’s attention to get their side of the story? Probably not – what if this person is violent? Are you likely to go and run a background check to make sure the newspaper isn’t lying? Probably not. Most likely you will just politely keep your distance from the person going forward.
        
        By contrast, if you are in the company of people you consider to NOT be rational, you are likely to take whatever they say with a grain of salt.
        
        ” In a society where many people are imperfectly rational and some are virulently irrational, it may lead to shunning, to legal penalties, or even to mob violence.
        
        But, unfortunately, that is the ONLY kind of society that will ever be possible. Galt’s Gulch isn’t an example of a society. It is a private community where people’s interactions are done by means of implied and explicit forms of contract. If a member of Galt’s Gulch suddenly started demonstrating irrational but non-criminal behavior he would be very quickly expelled from that community. A person has no inherent RIGHT to reside in Galt’s Gulch – his being there rests on the consent of others. In a real society an irrational but non-criminal person DOES have the right to be there and, indeed, has the exact same rights that anybody else does.
        
        And even if the society’s CULTURE is ideal that will not change the fact that rationality is a CHOICE that each individual must make. A rational culture makes it easier to make that choice – but it certainly doesn’t guarantee it. The most important thing that a rational culture does is that it provides incentives for and sets a path for the imperfectly rational to at least go through the motions of appearing rational. In a rational culture such people will be more inclined to keep their various irrationalities closeted and underground – whereas in a less than rational culture they might be inclined to proudly boast about and place their irrationalities on full display. And one of the pitfalls of a highly rational culture is that such people, by virtue of the fact that they seek to keep their irrationalities hidden, are often given a certain benefit of the doubt that they, in fact, do not deserve.
        
        Where are you most likely to be taken in by a con man – in a setting where you are dealing with people who come across as credible, rational and accomplished or in a setting where you are dealing people who come across as brazenly irrational and transparently obvious quacks and con-games are plentiful? Consider some of the shady people that have been associated with Objectivism in the past – including individuals that Ayn Rand herself knew very well, had the highest regard for and trusted.
        
        The bottom line is that, in some respects, you are more vulnerable to evil people in a rational society than you are in an irrational one. A few years ago the census tract I live in (in Fort Worth) was named the second safest big city neighborhood in the United States. It is not uncommon for me to take lengthy midnight walks – and the only thing I worry about is tripping on uneven sidewalks or an occasional stray dog. In other neighborhoods in Fort Worth I wouldn’t even DARE to walk though at night – and certainly not unarmed. But the reality is that I am a far easier target when I walk in my neighborhood at night precisely because my guard is down and I feel no need to arm myself. Where are you more likely to get away with shoplifting – in a store in a bad neighborhood where there are bars on the windows, security mirrors and cameras on every aisle and where the clerks are armed or in a store in a high end part of town where there are no security devices and the clerks are more focused on serving customers rather than watching them?
        
        All of this means that recourse against things such as fraud and defamation are actually MORE important in a highly rational culture than an irrational one precisely because in a rational culture a higher level of default credibility is assigned to a person’s assertions than it is in an irrational society. That’s why American tourists to backwards countries are looked upon as easy targets for con artists. They are far more likely to be trusting than are the locals or visitors from similarly backward countries who are already wise to such things and have a built in cynicism.
    - Dismuke
      
      “Is there a reason why you’re being a huge dick?”
      
      “And if you’re so hysterical about it….”
      
      Excuse me, but the above is utterly uncalled for – and, frankly, quite bizarre.
      
      You posted an opinion. I disagreed with that opinion. Since this is a venue for relevant discussion pertaining to the original posting, I posted a reply stating my disagreement. I stated the reasons for my disagreement and I endeavored to illustrate my point by means of a somewhat detailed example.
      
      I have gone back and reread my entire posting. I can find absolutely no portion of that is, in any way, impolite or anything even remotely approaching “hysterical.” The only explanation I can, therefore, guess at is that either 1) you regard mere disagreement with you as impolite and “hysterical” or 2) you are extremely defensive and thin-skinned.
      
      Either way, the problem is not on my end. And,if either is true, until you have managed to work such issues out, it is probably not a good idea to venture opinions online in venue where anyone who wishes to do so is free to state their disagreement.
      
      Now, I am probably about to open myself up to even more grief – but I will take a chance and actually respond to your question and another point. To paraphrase our awful president, I will “hit the reset button” and try again.
      
      ” here’s a question for you: if you run a restaurant, which is more cost-effective? 1.) refuting claims that you have a filthy kitchen by inviting people to come see for themselves or 2.) hiring a lawyer and suing?
      
      In the vast majority of situations, it is more practical and cost effective to just ignore defamatory attacks. As you suggest, lawyers are expensive and often cost more than the actual damages. And to the degree that there is any sort of publicity surrounding a defamation case, it often has the effect of publicizing and further spreading the vicious smears. But all of that is completely irrelevant to the basic issue at hand. There are also many instances where a shopkeeper decides that it is not worth his time or hassle pursuing a case of petty shoplifting. But that does not invalidate the fact that is rights have been violated.
      
      As for “inviting people to come see for themselves” – sure, one can do that. But this ignores one of the points I made in my argument. If the restaurant is smeared by a television station by what means does a small restaurant “invite” the tens of thousands of people who potentially watched the broadcast? That would cost a small fortune in advertising – which the owner may not have if the restaurant is struggling. And, even if the owner had the money, such a response would only expose the initial smear to new audiences. The mere fact that one has the option to go into damage control does not change or mitigate the fact that one HAS been damaged as a result of a malicious deception.
      
      “A reputation is not property. It is neither defined nor finite–nor does anyone have fundamental control over it. If you can’t control it, you don’t own it, “
      
      That is actually a very radical notion to anyone who has ever been involved in buying or selling a business. When a business is assigned a market value, one of the assets that is assigned a value is “goodwill” – i.e., reputation. For a good explanation of this, you can go here: http://www.talleynco.com/resources/newsletters/profitability/article.asp?article=resources_prt_2005-07_goodwill.html
      
      There is a REASON why, when one buys a business such as a successful restaurant, one will very frequently pay significantly more for it than the mere value of its stock, equipment and other tangible assets. That extra value mostly consists of the REPUTATION it has acquired over time – it is that REPUTATION that brings back repeat customers and brings in word of mouth customers. And that is properly regarded as an ASSET and is a major consideration when assigning a market value. If the person acquiring such a restaurant was required by the contract to completely change its name and all forms of branding then its value would be significantly less – its value would fall down to that of the tangible assets and whatever market value one might assign to its location. Having to change the name lowers the value of the business because it means it is essentially a brand new business – i.e., a business with NO reputation.
      
      “nor does anyone have fundamental control over it. If you can’t control it, you don’t own it,”
      
      OF COURSE one can control one’s reputation. If a business provides great prices, great service and great value and satisfies its customers – then those who have had positive experiences with the company will think well of it and be inclined to do business with it again at some point in the future. THAT is what is meant by reputation – along with whatever they may share about their experience with others. If a business provides poor service and has dissatisfied customers – then those who have had such negative experiences will have a low opinion of it and NOT be inclined to do business with it again at some point in the future and will perhaps warn other people to stay away from it. That too, is reputation. And whether a company has a good reputation with those who have done business with it or a bad reputation is ENTIRELY within the company’s control – just as you have control over whether the people you have dealt with regard you as a courteous person or a rude person, an ethical person or sleaze bag, someone with a strong work ethic or slug, intellectually honest or evasive, etc.
      
      And, yes, your reputation IS an asset. A person who has earned a reputation for being fair, honest, hard working, intelligent and trustworthy and a business that has earned a reputation for offering great value and great service is going to be more successful and in a position to command more money than a person who has earned a reputation for being a dishonest, lazy crook or a business that has earned a reputation for offering shoddy products and poor service. It is true that a reputation is considered to be an INTANGIBLE asset. But the fact that an asset is intangible does NOT somehow diminish its value – something that I would think someone familiar with ITOE would understand and agree with.
      
      To suggest that a good reputation – something that can ONLY be acquired over time through great deal of hard work, effort and through the consistent practice of many different VIRTUES – is somehow NOT an asset that one has EARNED and OWNS – am sorry but that is simply bizarre.
      
      Your reputation is a reflection of the FACTS OF REALITY. To the degree you have earned a positive reputation, that is a reflection of the FACTS OF REALITY concerning virtuous behavior on your part – behavior that you DO control. To the degree that you have earned a negative reputation, that, too, is a reflection of the FACTS OF REALITY on your behavior that you DO control.
      
      The reason defamation is an actionable offense is because it DESTROYS the reputation one has worked hard to earn by maliciously inserting a falsehood into the equation – in other words by DECEIVING the those who hear the smear by introducing something OTHER than the facts of reality into the equation. It is a situation where an asset that one has worked hard, perhaps across an entire lifetime of enormous struggle and virtuous behavior to EARN can be instantly wiped out overnight one the basis of a malicious DECEPTION.
      
      If you engage in deception and it results in another person’s material loss – then that IS actionable on the part of your victim. If one engages in deception to put forth a track record that one does NOT have and has NOT earned and uses that distortion of reality to obtain values that they did NOT properly earn – that is FRAUD. The ONLY difference, in the context of this discussion, between such fraud and defamation is that the deception is negative in nature and directed against an innocent third party.
    - Grames
      
      “Is there a reason why you’re being a huge dick?”
      
      Impressive reasoning.
- claire
  
  Jennifer – I totally disagree. What people says can have a devastating effect, and, I suspect, violate rights. Remember the McMartin case years ago? A family running a preschool found themselves inundated with accusations of child molestation. Police and prosecutors went crazy. The case just snowballed as parents got their kids to says all sorts of things. Subsequently, there was no evidence whatsoever against that family. Even the prosecution agreed that the entire case was the result of hysterical (possibly well-meaning) parents. The entire family is ruined.
  
  Here, there probably wasn’t even malicious intent. Still, wouldn’t you say that the family lost its right to a godd name and to do business – obviously, they can no longer babysit kids.
Tjitze de Boer

I think the line may be where you accuse someone of illegal actions.
Dismuke

” if a person unjustly attacks your reputation, defending yourself is almost always pretty easy. You simply have to say that the person is mistaken or lying, then state the facts…. Sure, some people will believe the lies, but most people worth knowing or dealing with will not just swallow them. Reasonable people will listen to you. I know that from far too much personal experience too.”

I’m sorry but…NO!

Defending one’s self is NOT almost always “pretty easy.” Suppose you own a restaurant and some local newspaper or television station – either because the reporter hates your politics or perhaps at the instigation of a competitor – publishes to a mass audience an assertion that your kitchen is unsanitary, that dozens of people have become gravely ill as a result and eating there is a potential health risk. How do you answer such an assertion? You can’t. You do not have the means of reaching that audience – and very few of in that audience are likely to take time out of their lives to seek your side of the story. And you certainly have no means of addressing the second hand hearsay that will go viral after that point and can continue to circulate for years afterwards.

“(Many staunch defenders of defamation laws are unwilling to [defend themselves], I’ve found: they see themselves as above any such explanations to the unwashed masses.) ”

That’s not why most people in such a situation are reluctant to defend themselves. The reason they do not usually wish to proactively defend themselves in a public way is because such a defense tends to have the effect of drawing additional attention to the defamatory charge. It is very common and entirely understandable that when people stumble across a person or an organization defending themselves against an accusation to conclude that where there’s smoke there might perhaps be fire. This is ESPECIALLY true if the defamation is coming from a source who is famous or from an organization such as a news outlet that has a certain amount of default, institutional credibility.

” As such, a person cannot be entitled to a certain reputation by right.

That’s correct. But a person DOES have a right to whatever reputation he has EARNED (and, part and parcel of that, of course, one must also face the consequences if the reputation he has EARNED is negative).

And, ultimately, as individuals, our reputation is often our ONLY asset when we wish to enter into some sort of long term relationship with other people. That is why companies run background checks. If a prospective employer came across information ostensibly demonstrating that you are a bigot, torture animals, have a history of irresponsible and/or violent behavior – how many are even going to give you a chance to explain? Most will just move on to another candidate rather than spend time placing themselves in the awkward position of having to raise those issues. And how many responsible single women will be inclined to enter into a conversation with/learn more about/flirt with a single man she has just been introduced to but who, according to a close friend, supposedly has a nasty venereal disease or supposedly stalked and beat his ex girlfriend to the point she was hospitalized?

Free speech? I am sorry – but that is NOT free speech. As Kyle points out, is form of FRAUD – fraud used not to obtain a value but rather to DESTROY a value.

“First, defamation laws are too often used as a weapon to silence criticism — meaning, to violate free speech rights. If a person dislikes the criticisms of others — even if those criticisms are completely justified by the facts — he can can sue (or threaten to sue) others into silence.”

All of the above is completely true. But the issue is NOT with the concept of defamation.as a legally actionable injury. The issue is entirely one of how the laws are applied and of lawsuits being filed on frivolous grounds. There are also a great many instances of abuse with medical malpractice laws and law suits being filed on frivolous grounds or for purposes that ultimately amount to extortion or theft. But it doesn’t necessarily follow that, because of such abuse, an injured patient should not have the right to sue a doctor for legitimate negligence and incompetence.

Ultimately, it all boils down to making sure that the laws and consequences are appropriate to the relevant context. Some random person prone to exaggeration and drama saying on her facebook wall that a certain restaurant is “yucky and unsanitary” is not quite the same thing as the top rated local newscast including the restaurant in an expose of “five filthy restaurants that may make you sick.”

As for online reviews – as far as I can tell, there doesn’t appear to be a whole lot that a defamed company can do legally to go against such reviews. If there were, my guess is there would not be as many online review forums as there are. And fake negative reviews written by competitors on such sites is a well-known problem – I even knew a businessman who actually admitted to me that he has done just that. But, here too, it is a matter of updating laws to fit context – including the context where reviewers can be and have a right to be anonymous. How should defamation laws be appropriately applied? I have no idea – I do not have a legal background.

Bottom line: ANY material misrepresentation of the facts about a product, person or organization for the purpose of deceiving anther person into taking actions he would not have normally undertaken had the facts not been misrepresented is a form of FRAUD. The primary difference between a shady business deal and defamation is the injured party. In a shady business deal the injured victim is the person who bought into the deception. In a case of defamation the injured victim is the object of the misrepresentation.
William H Stoddard

What I think about this depends on which approach to law I take. On one hand, there’s a fairly deductive approach starting from “force may be used only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use.” On the other, I find it worthwhile to look at the old common law, which is often quite sound as a basis for a free society. And common law provides for defamation to be a tort and perhaps a crime. So I hesitate to just rule it out.

For comparison, many libertarians subscribe to what might be called “physical property fundamentalism”: defining all rights as property rights (including the right to life!), and defining property as physical property, with other sorts of property being rationalized as indirect ways of claiming physical property. For some things, this works—for example, ownership of corporate stocks as property can be understood as ownership of corporate physical assets at a remove. For others, it doesn’t; neither rights in spectrum nor copyrights are easily made sense of as ownership of physical items. It makes sense in some cases to say that there is ownership of “things” that aren’t physical entities, where the exclusiveness and the other traits of ownership of physical objects have analogs, in the way that a melody is the acoustic analog of an entity.

Can reputation be owned? Yes, this is ownership of the content of another person’s mind. But so is copyright, in some cases. I can quote the lyrics of Tom Lehrer’s “Who’s Next” or Joni Mitchell’s “Don’t Interrupt the Sorrow” from memory, all the way through, because they’re stored in my brain; but I don’t have the right to do so. Does this mean that my memory is someone else’s property? I don’t think this alone is necessarily sufficient to rule it out.

When you look at the conditions where defamation laws developed, you can see reasons that people might have wanted them badly. Many of the things they refer to were hard to prove or disprove objectively, or exposed you to legal measures that had little element of objectivity. Claim that someone is a leper, or a heretic, in the middle ages, or later that they are a sodomite or a syphilitic, and you have at least made them likely to be shunned, if not harshly punished; such claims were a deadly weapon, and the person who made them without the most careful regard for their truth was a threat—it would be too easy for a group of people to ruin each other by telling such lies. So we have laws that forbid saying or printing things that destroy a person’s good name with other people . . . if such things are not true.

Conditions may be different now, when we have such greater resources for testing objectively if something is true—though they’re still far from perfect.

I do see the merit of the point you’re making. But I’m not sure it’s a part of the common law that we should get rid of.
- Dismuke
  
  “Can reputation be owned? Yes, this is ownership of the content of another person’s mind.”
  
  I am just going off the top of my head here – this is not a subject I have a great deal of specialized knowledge on – but I question whether the ownership in this case is to “the content of another person’s mind.”
  
  My thought is that one’s ownership here ultimately rests with one’s TRACK RECORD (as well as other efforts such as advertising) that RESULT in a certain positive impression in other people’s minds. What is in other people’s minds is merely an EFFECT, influenced by one’s behavior and track record. But just because you have a stellar track record and provided exceptional service and value to someone, it does not follow that the other person will be rational, fair or just in terms of their evaluation of you. Ultimately, another person’s evaluation of you is their own. I don’t see how one can make any sort of claim over it.
  
  A right to one’s reputation boils down to right to one’s own IDENTITY. Part and parcel of your identity is your track record, your character, your integrity and all of your various virtues and vices. THAT is what you have a right to – the positive impressions in other people’s minds are merely the result. If you have a track record for being knowledgeable about certain subjects and for having acquired certain skills and have a track record of being a person of good character – that will RESULT in people who value such things likely forming a positive evaluation of you. But not everybody values such things – some people are nihilists or filled with envy and will hate you for that same track record. If you are seeking to be a respected journalist to a rational audience, a track record which demonstrates that you are a dishonest Leftist hack will result in a negative reputation. If you are Mrs. Alan Greenspan (a.k.a, Andrea Mitchell) a track record of being a dishonest Leftist hack is an asset that keeps her in a highly lucrative TV gig. If she suddenly attempted to establish a track record for intellectual honesty – well, she would alienate her employer and her audience.
  
  Defamation is, ultimately, an attack on the injured party’s IDENTITY. Your track record – good or bad – is what it is. If it is bad, you have the option to take steps to improve it. If your track record is good and you cease to practice the behavior that earned you that track record to begin with it will eventually become something less. You do NOT have a right to a track record that you did not earn – and if you use deception to create the illusion of such a track record, you could possibly end up crossing into the territory of fraudulent behavior. But whatever positives you have in your track record, however many or few – you EARNED those. They are part of your IDENTITY.
  
  A fundamental principle of individualism and of a free society is that AN INDIVIDUAL OWNS HIMSELF. Your identity is not merely an extension of yourself – you ARE your identity. Your identity consists not of just physical bones and flesh but of your every experience, your every thought and your every action from the time you were born. For another person to use lies and deception in order to maliciously distort your track record is an attack on your IDENTITY – i.e, an attack on YOUR PERSON. It is an act of indirect force in the exact same way that fraud is an act of indirect force. To abolish defamation laws as such would leave the innocent with no means of recourse against thugs who initiate vicious and potentially very damaging acts of force against their identity – i.e, against their very person.
http://www.facebook.com/edward.t.powell Ed Powell

I’d like to echo the commenters below to look into how this tort evolved in English Common Law, and the reasons for it, which were vastly different than the short description Wikipedia gives about defamation in the Roman Empire.

Defamation is but one of a number of torts, each of which must be understood to understand the concept “tort”. No Objectivists that I am aware of have addressed torts in any but very superficial ways. There is no Objectivist answer to the questions, “What is a tort?”, “What is a crime?”, and “What is the difference between a tort and a crime?”

A Diana-friendly introduction to torts is contained in this reasonably good Teaching Company course:

http://www.thegreatcourses.com/tgc/courses/course_detail.aspx?cid=562

I recommend it with the qualification that it presents a more modern understanding of the issues, while describing only cursorily the history.

Finally, defamation properly understood does not deal with “ridiculous claims about [you]” but only with claims that materially affect your life such that measurable damage occurs in a provable fashion. The bar is (and should be) very high.
Dismuke

“A person’s reputation is the sum of the judgments that others make of him: it’s “the beliefs or opinions that are generally held about someone or something.” As such, a person cannot be entitled to a certain reputation by right.”

I want to expand on something that I made in my reply to William Stoddard’s comment.

When you live in a civilized society where physical force is outlawed, your only means of survival (i.e, of obtaining the values from others you need to sustain your life and defending yourself) is reason. In such a social context, the use of reason means persuading others by means of appealing to logic and the facts of reality.

If you wish to obtain a job you do so by means of appealing to the facts of reality that provide positive reasons as to WHY someone should hire you – facts such as your knowledge, skills, experience, past accomplishments and your good character. To the degree that such facts of reality about you are either non-existent or negative you are going to have a great deal of difficulty persuading other people to deal with you. But if that is the bed you have made for yourself, then you have to lie in it and perhaps take steps to improve yourself for the future.

Ultimately, in a civilized society, if you wish to obtain ANY sort of value from another person, either material or spiritual, your ONLY civilized means of doing so is by persuasively appealing to certain FACTS OF REALITY about yourself to demonstrate HOW and WHY dealing with you can be of potential value to the other person. One of the reasons we spend so much time and effort acquiring education, skills, manners and taking steps to see that our virtues are visible and recognized is in order to make ourselves more effective and successful at trading and obtaining the values that we want and need from others.

The sum total of your good character, your accomplishments, your track record is one of THE most important tools you have in terms of your future survival and success in a civilized society. And if that sum total of such facts of reality reflect on you in a positive way, that is something you necessarily had to work hard for and that you have EARNED.

To defame a person is to insert a vicious and malicious deception and distortion into the very track record the victim has worked hard for, earned and depends on for his very survival and success. It is to destroy a VALUE that a person has worked hard over a prolonged period of time to create.

Yes, a person can resort to persuasion and point to various facts of reality in an attempt to defend himself against and minimize the damage caused by a defamation. But just because it is possible to go into damage control mode does not alter the fact that one HAS been damaged and injured. Just because an antidote exists to the poison someone has tricked a victim into drinking does not mitigate the fact that a crime has been committed. Just because one’s insurance company might provide reimbursement for an item that has been stolen does not mitigate the fact that a theft has taken place.

That sum total of who you are – the sum total of ALL facts of reality about everything you have thought, said or done since infancy – constitutes your IDENTITY. You ARE your identity. And, as an individualist, if you own yourself, YOU OWN YOUR IDENTITY. As a volitional being, your identity is something that YOU created. It is a VALUE (or, if you are a lout, a disvalue) and an ASSET that you CREATED just as much and even more so as any intellectual or material property you might have created. Who you ARE is as much a part of your person as is your hand or your skin. The use of deception to distort and defame this VALUE that you worked so hard to create – that is as much of an initiation of force on you and your life as is the vandalism of any other property you own.

” , a person cannot be entitled to a certain reputation by right.”

This is correct. But a person DOES have a right for other people who choose to judge him to be able to do so based on THE FACTS OF REALITY – i.e, to be judged on the basis of WHO HE IS, good or bad, positive or negative. Many people will not choose to judge him at all – and it is their right to do so. Others will form unjust conclusions and conclusions based upon irrational standards – and that is their right to do so. What one does NOT have a right to do is to use deception in order to distort the facts of reality in such a way as to interfere with other people’s ability to judge him based on WHO HE IS – i.e, based on the ACTUAL facts of reality.

“A person can influence his reputation by his words and deeds, but it’s not his property because ultimately, a person’s reputation consists of judgments in the minds of others. It’s their property, in fact.”

It is true that the judgements in the minds of others are not his property and is, in fact, their property.

But what IS his property is the TRACK RECORD of his actual words and deeds – a track record that he CREATED. To use deception to distort that track record is a malicious act of vandalism. His reputation is CONSEQUENCE of his words and deeds – a consequence of who he IS, i.e, a consequence of his IDENTITY. A defamation is more serious and fundamental than a mere attack on what you are referring to as one’s “reputation” – it is an attack on the very thing that makes one’s reputation possible in the first place. It is an attack on the person’s very identity, his very being – and an attack on one of his major tools of survival as a rational being in a civilized society.
Eric Maughan

I find your analysis of the propriety of legal actions for defamation to be hard to square with your position on the right to privacy. When discussing privacy your position, as far as I could tell (correct me if I am mischaracterizing), was that privacy was important to people and that invasions of privacy diminished the quality of one’s life, and that therefore privacy must be a right protected by government. My protestations that, in many (although not all) of the privacy situations discussed by you on your show *no initiation of force*–and hence no rights violation–had taken place were scoffed at as rationalism. However, if “importance to people” and “diminishing of the quality of ones life” are the standards for determining whether government action is valid, then what’s the problem with defamation laws?

Also, for what its worth, the truth of what an alleged defamer has said is a *complete defense* in libel/slander cases, i.e., if you are sued all you have to do is prove that what you said is true, and then you are off the hook, regardless of how harmful. This diminishes the power of the “chilling effect” argument, as at best it might cause people, before they communicate harmful information about another person, to engage in due diligence to verify the truth of what they are going to say. Some states also include some sort of culpability requirement on the part of the defendant before slander/libel will be found, for example, that not only was the statement false but the defendant *should have known* that it was false. Furthermore, the requirement that the plaintiff prove actual pecuniary damages is a serious impediment to plaintiffs–mere hurt feelings, or even damaged reputation in the abstract sense will not suffice. This further diminishes the “chilling effect” argument. Additionally, the threat of a frivolous lawsuit is not unique to defamation laws, and is a problem of the legal system as a whole, which should be addressed as such (for example, by instituting a winner-pays system or making it easier to get legal sanctions against lawyers for instituting frivolous suits).

The connection between fraud and defamation would also be interesting to hear, and may be revealing about the propriety of defamation laws. For example, fraud involves some sort of dishonesty on the defrauder’s part in order to *gain* a value from the defrauded. On the other hand, defamation involves some sort of dishonesty on the defamer’s part in order to *destroy* a value of the defamed. They seem very similar to me, and very likely deserve similar treatment.
Dismuke

To expand on a few points I initially made in my reply to Jennifer…..

“. However, even if a person should be able to do that, I’m doubtful that defamation should be a legally actionable tort in a free society. Why?

First, defamation laws are too often used as a weapon to silence criticism — meaning, to violate free speech rights. If a person dislikes the criticisms of others — even if those criticisms are completely justified by the facts — he can can sue (or threaten to sue) others into silence. Alas, I have personal experience with such abuses. The cost in time, money, and anxiety of defending yourself against a false claim of defamation is ginormous.”

Isn’t this ultimately a Utilitarian type argument? Sure, there’s a victim involved here – but going after the perpetrator interferes with the Greater Good that is open and and frank speech.

I, of course, know that is NOT your actual philosophical position. But it certainly strikes me as being implicit in the way you wrote it.

On another point – none of this has anything to do with free speech rights. It is impossible for a private citizen to violate another person’s free speech rights. Free speech is something that ONLY applies to censorship or any other form of GOVERNMENTAL efforts to silence the free expression of ideas.

It is true that private citizens can engage in certain thuggish behavior that has the effect of silencing speech. The head of a criminal enterprise might use various forms of threats and intimidation in order to prevent employees or reporters from speaking out or publishing what is going on. But the crime involved is the threats and intimidation – not a crackdown on free speech.

As for your concern about people filing frivolous defamation suits as a means of extortion or intimidation, that is certainly valid. But it is also an entirely different issue. There are also disreputable organizations that make dubious assertions with regard to copyrights and patents in order to intimidate or extort – but that is not a reason to throw out patent or copyright protection. And there is an entire industry of trip and fall type lawyers who make good money by extorting damage and injury settlements from insurance companies – but that is not a reason to throw out valid recourse for an honest person who has sustained actual injuries. The answer to all of these problems is not to limit the available recourse to those who suffer legitimate harm but to fix various aspects of the legal system and its processes that are obviously broken.

Anyhow, I have been very prolific in this thread. But I find it an interesting subject – and it is one that I am certainly passionate about. In the end, a person’s good name is one of his most valuable assets.
claire

With today’s social media, it is beyond easy to ruin someone’s chances for a job or college. That is simply wrong and a violation of rights. Someone in these comments said actual damage is ‘rare.’ Does that mean that one innocent person should have to live having his or her reputation ruined, losing out of a job, college acceptance, etc.? I say no.

As for saying that one’s reputation can be gained back easily by simply proving by our behavior that ‘it ain’t so,” that’s ridiculous. Does anyone think the prospective employer, college, or even romantic partner will listen and believe, when there are many others out there without that ‘stain.’ Diane says that a person is not entitled to a reputation by right. Really? Am I guilty until I prove myself innocent? Consider the case of a high school girl whose been branded a slut/whore by some mean girls. The schools bullies her. How is she going to prove her innocence. Why should she? She’s just a kid.

In this case, I have to agree with Elsworth Toohey, who know the value of slander. Even if it were to be proven wrong, the stink remains.
- Dismuke
  
  And speaking of Ellsworth Toohey, Clair, just imagine the chilling effect that no defamation laws could potentially have on those who are intellectual/political activists who are deemed to be “too effective” in certain quarters. Diana mentioned the chilling effect that the threat of a frivolous defamation suit can have on open expression. That is nothing compared to the chill that would occur if all the Ellsworth Toohey types and their sycophants in the media could just make up out of whole cloth and publish ANYTHING they wished about their targets with ZERO accountability to ANYONE about its veracity.
  
  Suppose you begin to make a name for yourself as a result of publishing op ed pieces in favor of right to work laws or in opposition to socialized medicine. Now imagine what would happen if an organization such as the SEIU or the George Soros funded moveon.org spent some money to make it known that you have a history of sexual harassment or child molestation or mental illness. And let’s say they get one of their buddies in the media to create out of whole cloth and publish documents that “prove” you are a white supremacist. How many people have financial pockets deep enough to survive something like that let alone counter it? It doesn’t even matter if they fail to get away with the smear all of the time. Just the knowledge that such an ordeal is POSSIBLE will keep many from speaking out on behalf of controversial causes or risk saying anything that would offend an enemy with deep pockets. And, for goodness sakes, imagine what would happen if Objectivism – and those who advocate it – started having too much of an impact.
  
  You think today’s Walter Duranty Media is dishonest, corrupt and contemptible? Imagine if media organizations did not have to worry about libel or slander and thus had NO limits AT ALL to their ability to lie about and destroy people they do not like.
LDH Hall

Science and isometric ;psycho.
LDH Hall

, Ability fraud, cosmochronotrope.
LDH Hall

,Ability macro-fraud , , cosmochronotrope psychotic.

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