“The guy who did it, who originally did it, was his old roommate.”
Yesterday afternoon I noticed some unusual comments coming in on my blog. The comments were around a couple of opinion pieces that I’ve written on the Jay Maisel vs. Andy Baio case.
The comments being directed at me were accusatory and wanting to know why I had not disclosed the fact that Andy Baio and I were college roommates prior to writing my pieces defending him against what I felt was an unwarranted lawsuit by Jay Maisel.
At first I couldn’t imagine where these allegations were coming from. Andy Baio and I were never college roommates, as one commenter was suggesting. Andy Baio and I didn’t even go to the same college. What’s more, I’ve had very little interaction with Andy Baio in my entire life.
I seem to recall that I did meet him once at one of these tech press sort of junkets years ago. But I’d hardly characterize Andy Baio and I as “good friends” and I most certainly have never been his roommate.
But all of this made sense last night when I listened to Scott Kelby’s latest video broadcast which addressed both the Maisel vs. Baio case as well as the blog posts that I’d written.
And so I was surprised when listening to the video broadcast to hear Kelby state, “the guy who did it (the alleged infringer Andy Baio), who originally did it, was his (Thomas Hawk’s) old roommate.”
Now as a blogger or journalist full disclosure is important. It’s everything actually. It’s your entire reputation. For me to write strong opinion pieces supporting Andy Baio *without* disclosing that we were good friends and had even formerly *lived together*, well that would be a pretty big omission. It makes me look bad as a blogger not to have disclosed such an important and key piece of information — which is what commenters would rightly be calling me out on in my comments if Kelby’s reporting was true.
Except that Kelby’s report is blatantly false.
Not only is it blatantly false, but it’s easily verifiably false in a court of law.
Certainly as a journalist, and an important one especially in the community of my blog readers, Kelby understands libel laws. Certainly he knows that you cannot report things as fact that are not true and in fact could be verified as false in a court of law. This is not Kelby expressing an opinion. It’s Kelby stating something absolutely as fact about me and my character which is provable as false in a court of law.
So, would it be ok for me to sue Scott Kelby for libel? Or would the better approach be to simply say, hey, the guy made a mistake, no big deal, and let it go?
In Kelby’s video show he gives his opinion that Jay Maisel was just defending his copyright when going after Andy Baio with his lawyers and their whopping $ 32,500 settlement. At one point he even reads a viewer comment on the show saying that Maisel settled for too little, that he should have gone for more!
Kelby would seem to think that if the law allows it, it’s fair game. Andy’s type of use, or the fact that his use was possibly fair use and at worst a simple mistake doesn’t matter. Jay did the right thing by going after him for a pretty hefty settlement.
Just because the law says you can do something and profit from it, doesn’t always mean that you should do something and profit from it.
So answer me this. Would suing Scott Kelby for libel simply be me defending my livelihood as a blogger? Would that lawsuit simply be another source of revenue that I ought to be able to count on? Or did Kelby (or his fact checkers) just make a sloppy mistake and one that I should just chalk up to as sloppy journalism and let it slide?
Thomas Hawk Digital Connection