Art Bell Threatens Lawsuit Over Weblog Comments

Talk radio host Art Bell is threatening to sue me over comments posted by readers on Workbench.

At first I thought it was a hoax, but the emails check out. Writing from the Philippines with an email address at KNYE, the radio station he founded while living in Pahrump, Nev., Bell suggested several times he'd pursue a lawsuit in an email exchange that began Wednesday (full transcript):

I am the real Art Bell and your column and the responses to it have just been called to my attention.

I am contacting my Atty to determine what Legal action can be taken against those that have made actionable statements. ...

I would begin by taking the site down right away. I am a reasonable person but I can assure you as I tried in my email that what is contained in that thread goes way beyond the bar in even the case of a PUBLIC PERSON. I am shocked that as a media person you would not be well aware of this. Accusations of Child Molestation and Murder are actionable. Please review what you have allowed to be posted. What at the very least I expect is a written apology as well as the entire disgusting mess to be taken down right away. ...

If you are unable to eliminate the obvious Libel, it can be done at a far greater cost to us both. I am not talking about your article, I am talking about the comment's made and carried by your page. Please review it. I will not contact you again, my Lawyer will.

I've written about Bell three times in the last year, drawing more than 2,300 reader comments:

• Art Bell's Wife Dies Unexpectedly, Jan. 07, 2006
• Art Bell Remarries, Will Leave U.S., April 16, 2006
• All Art Bell, All Romance, All the Time, April 19, 2006

When Bell shared details about his wife's death and subsequent remarriage with his radio audience, which numbers in the millions, a bunch of his listeners found this blog in Google searches and commented on the subject. Some of the speculation was pretty savage, and no one familiar with his show would be surprised at the number of conspiracy theories offered in explanation. I've never engaged in any of that speculation.

Though I give readers wide latitude in the comments they post, I remove libelous comments when they're called to my attention, as I told him in our email exchange. But I'm under no legal obligation to do so, thanks to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act:

No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.

I'd prefer not to get sued, but if he wants to test Section 230 in court, I think it's a principle worth fighting for. The blogging medium thrives on its receptivity to reader feedback. I've taken 13,000 comments on Workbench and more than 300,000 on my other sites. If a blogger was treated as the author of every statement made by a reader, there would be no way to accept comments without reviewing each one prior to publication, turning a medium for boisterous public discussion into something as controversy-averse and excessively careful as a newspaper's letters to the editor section.

Radio · Politics · 2006/10/23 · 147 COMMENTS · Link

Game Designer Steve Jackson Assaulted

Roleplaying game designer Steve Jackson was assaulted and robbed in Austin Wednesday:

Yesterday was not a good day for me. I was the victim of an assault and robbery in my own neighborhood -- though not, I believe, by neighbors! This area needs more policing than it gets. It seems to be drawing predatory visitors, and yesterday the dice came up badly for me.

Austin EMS arrived quickly and took good care of me -- and one of the EMTs turned out to play In Nomine. It's a small world, and we're everywhere. That was very cool. I spent a few hours in the ER, and was discharged.

This is a good time to mention that one of the regulars on Workbench, fellow UNT alumnus Chad Irby, created Car Wars with Jackson, a demented work of genius that sold 250,000 copies in the '80s and early '90s.

I've never understood why he doesn't mention that more often.

Rpgs · 2006/10/20 · 6 COMMENTS · Link

Creative Commons and the Eldred Decision

Lawrence Lessig quantifies how well Creative Commons is doing:

Creative Commons launched the licensing project in December 2002. Within a year, there were more than 1,000,000 link-backs to our licenses (meaning at least a million places on the web where people were linking to our licenses, and presumptively licensing content under those licenses). Within two years, that number was 12,000,000. At the end of our last fundraising campaign, it had grown to about 45,000,000 link-backs to our licenses. That was December, 2005. In the first six months of 2006, that number grew by almost 100,000,000 licenses. In June, we reported about 140,000,000 link-backs to our licenses.

Because I'd like to see the public domain defended against entertainment corporations that want to extend their copyrights forever, I thought the 2003 Supreme Court decision Eldred v. Ashcroft was a terrible milestone for creative work in the U.S. Companies like Disney, after making millions adapting works like Cinderella and Snow White from the public domain, are lobbying to deny that right to future creators.

But as Creative Commons grows, I'm beginning to think we're better off after Eldred because it provided such strong impetus to create a new commons for creative work.

Creative Commons · Politics · Publishing · 2006/10/19 · Comment · Link

Santorum: Protecting the U.S. from Lord Sauron

In a meeting with the editorial board of the Bucks County Courier Times, Sen. Rick Santorum used J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings to explain his support for the Iraq war:

Embattled U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum said America has avoided a second terrorist attack for five years because the "Eye of Mordor" has instead been drawn to Iraq.

Santorum used the analogy from one of his favorite books, J.R.R. Tolkien's 1950s fantasy classic, Lord of the Rings, to put an increasingly unpopular war in Iraq into terms any school kid could easily understand.

"As the hobbits are going up Mount Doom, the Eye of Mordor is being drawn somewhere else," Santorum said, describing the tool the evil Lord Sauron used in search of the magical ring that would consolidate his power over Middle-earth.

"It's being drawn to Iraq and it's not being drawn to the U.S.," he continued. "You know what? I want to keep it on Iraq. I don't want the Eye to come back here to the United States."

This comment writes its own punchline, but as a teen-aged dungeon master I'm the wrong person to mock Sen. Santorum for dorky analogies. One of these days I'll write on my blog about how the battle of Sadr City was like the Caves of Chaos.

But if we're mapping the Lord of the Rings onto Iraq, the books pitted weak hobbits relying on stealth and guerrilla warfare against a mighty superpower that had a huge army and amazing surveillance capabilities. They defeated Lord Sauron by drawing him into a military conflict as a distraction while the hobbits snuck into Sauron's homeland and destroyed him with the medieval equivalent of a suitcase nuke.

Politics · 2006/10/18 · 16 COMMENTS · Link

Daytona Beach Hospital Makes Room for Bikers

Biketoberfest begins in nine days in Daytona Beach, an event heralded by hundreds of huge motorcycles roaring south down Highway A1A like two-wheeled F-16s. Halifax Medical Center is making an unusual preparation for the event -- they're limiting elective surgeries so they have time to put injured bikers back together:

The decision, he said, is the result of the carnage that came through the emergency room during Bike Week 2006. Bike Week is the busiest time at the Halifax emergency room, the state's fourth busiest.

"During the events, we'll have 135 injured come in; half will have to be admitted and 25 percent in the ICU (intensive care unit)," Lang said. "And these are the most serious kinds (of patient casualties): amputations, spine injuries, head injuries."

Daytona Beach · Florida · 2006/10/10 · 2 COMMENTS · Link

God Hates Blogs, Journals, Spaces and Some Photo Sharing

Bloggers are going to hell one entry at a time, according to Kevin D. Denee of the Restored Church of God's Ambassador Youth magazine:

Should teenagers and others in the Church express themselves to the world through blogs? Because of the obvious dangers; the clear biblical principles that apply; the fact that it gives one a voice; that it is almost always idle words; that teens often do not think before they do; that it is acting out of boredom; and it is filled with appearances of evil -- blogging is simply not to be done in the Church. It should be clear that it is unnecessary and in fact dangerous on many levels.

Let me emphasize that no one -- including adults -- should have a blog or personal website (unless it is for legitimate business purposes).

Photo sharing is acceptable to the Lord in some circumstances:

Some questions naturally arise: "Can I have a photo gallery?" For example, maybe you visited an exotic country and want to share your photos with close friends. This can be done, but certain guidelines apply. Of course, there should never be any inappropriate pictures (again, be careful of the appearance of evil); it should be private and password protected, and only shown to family and closest friends.

Politics · 2006/10/08 · 19 COMMENTS · Link

NoWomenJustMen: The Roster at Most Tech Conferences

I heard from one of the organizers of the Spring Experience, an enterprise Java conference organized by NoFluffJustStuff that I criticized for assembling a 38-speaker roster than doesn't include a single female.

He never responded to my request to run his e-mail in full, but this quote sums it up:

We sought out a qualified speaker who was female. She is on your list. Unfortunately, she is in very high demand (as one would probably expect!) and in the end could not commit due to a scheduling conflict. Even with the conflict, we went the extra mile to accomodate her because she brought something different and refreshing to our target audience. Unfortunately, she just couldn't commit.

We're actively pushing bright girls out of professions like programming by reinforcing the idea that technological fields only appeal to one gender. The brain drain this causes has to be incredibly detrimental to this country's competitiveness, discouraging 51 percent of the population from pursuing these fields even as we rely more heavily on them in our economy.

Politics · Java · 2006/10/07 · 9 COMMENTS · Link

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