When does blog ranting become slander?

Very interesting post by Jeremiah Owyang on the impact of a "big audience" blogger dissing someone far lesser known. Essentially, a very well known blogger called a person who had minimal online presence an "a-hole" after they had a disagreement. The blogger blogged, digged etc and as Jeremiah notes:

Today, if you do a search result and examine the first search engine results page (SERP) you’ll notice that as of today 9/10 results are tied to Simon being an “a-hole”. Perhaps most importantly the first two results are of Thomas (we know most clicks start there), the only one that’s not is Simon B’s Facebook profile, which has very little info.

Simon had very little online footprint to start with, and now it will be dominated online by all of these social media elements. Even if Thomas chose to change the title of his blog and flickr, the Twitter, tailrank, and many other online echos will forever be archived –Simon’s online reputation is forever linked to this incident.

Regardless of the wrongs and rights of this case, its an interesting issue, made worse in this case (as I understand it) by the attacked person holding down a professional role and thus not really able to respond in kind in any way (They have now responded - see update 4). I was interested in what various people thought should be done in the comment section - most of the suggestions being to blog back, or leave comments on the attackers' blog, or buy Google ads in some way to redress the balance (maybe he should write a Knol, it seems to get instant Googlejuice).

But, as Jeremiah responds, this won't really help due to the asymmetric reach of blogs of different sizes. He has some practical thoughts:

# Anyone is susceptible to brand damage, even if you’re not in this space (Simon is not in a web professional)
# Bloggers with large social media platforms are incredibly powerful, and must recognize the long term impacts of their actions.
# Businesses should assume every customer (and employee) is capable of impacting an individual or company’s online reputation
# Companies should already have a crises plan ready to deal with online criticisms, read this article from CBS on outsourcing brand damage experts

This issue - in essence its how will we define & handle Online Defamation & Slander* - is something I've been increasingly interested in, as it is very clear that you can (still) say things in the blogosphere ( which is far more persistent ), that you cannot in more traditional media without getting sued. Also, its one thing for bloggers to have a flame war, its another thing to have a go at a person in a post where they cannot respond in kind. I suspect we will start to see legal tests being made in this area in the next year or so. (In fact, it will be interesting to see if this one is tested - I think under UK law there is just cause, not sure about US law)

Its also an issue for the proponents of social ranking systems (Whuffie etc) - if a "high status" individual can ruin the reputation of a low ranked person without (i) being in the right* and (ii) any recourse, you have not created a happy smiling meritocracy, you have created a vicious feudal hierarchy.

Update - a related NYT article on Congress getting more interested in Web Privacy (seen on Techmeme today)

*I'm not arguing the rights and wrongs of this case, more the general principle that the "big blog" will by definition get to write history, as it were.

*Technically, this case is Libel as Rachel Clarke points out in the comments (but if you look at what others have blogged/said now, it looks like slander too).

Update - 2 other interesting posts on the mob mentality of this episode, and how it may be mediated from Hutch Carpenter and Cyndy Aleo-Carreira

Update 3 - just had to share this from The Onion (hat tip Confused of Calcutta)

"We are blessed to be living in an age when we have a global communications network in which idiots, assholes, and total and complete wastes of fucking human life alike can come together to give instant feedback in an unfettered and unmonitored online environment," Mylenek said. "What better way to take advantage of this incredible technology than to log onto the Internet and insult a complete stranger?"

Update 4 - The non-blogging party's employer has issued a statement, over here. It would appear the blogger/photographer had been indulging in a bit of downblousing and was ejected for it......