Peter Friedman
Lawyer
Ruling Imagination: Law and Creativity
I don’t think Glenn Beck raped and murdered a young girl, but why won’t he deny it?
Arts Technica reports that 2 days after the site glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com Beck’s media company “had contacted the domain registrar demanding that the “‘highly defamatory domain name’ glennbeckrapedandmurdered- ayounggirlin1990.com be deleted, that the WhoisGuard privacy protection service be revoked, and that the owner’s contact information be turned over to the lawyers.”
This is a classic case of an effort to “chill” speech you don’t like. Parody and political speech are protected by the First Amendment, but who wants to take on the costs of litigating against a media giant? One of my students asked the other day if there were any way for an individual to get funding to litigate against a large corporation. I explained that there really isn’t. If you’re really, really poor, you might get legal aid, but not likely even if you’re really, really poor to defend against a lawsuit like Beck’s. We have a brilliant legal system, but it’s been entirely distorted by inequalities of wealth and the expense that has become accepted as part of litigation. Someone with little legal merit to their claims or defenses can prevail merely by wearing down and exhausting the resources of their adversary.
I myself wouldn’t begin to conclude from seeing the domain name that there was any real evidence Glenn Beck had raped and murdered a young girl, but one expert in the article thought Beck’s lawsuit had enough merit that it can’t merely be brushed off:
“I don’t think ‘Ha ha it’s a joke’ at the end gets you off,” he says; if the parodic information is defamatory, it’s risky for the defendant in such cases. That’s complicated by the fact that the original domain name made the allegedly defamatory claim against Beck—and of course no one stumbling across the site in a search engine or elsewhere would see any disclaimer. In such cases, the domain name itself is a standalone piece of content; the disclaimer may help regarding the website content, but it won’t necessarily transfer a cone of protection to the domain name as well.
This is what we get when we take seriously allegations like the one that Obama wants to euthanize my mom (would she be so lucky! — sorry, that’s an entirely different and very personal topic).
ADDENDUM: Beck does want to beat Rep. Charles Rangel to death with a shovel, and he wants to kill other people, right?
ADDENDUM 2: This guy Beck may or may not be a rapist and murderer (but why won’t he just prove his innocence?), but he is definitely a first-rate parodist, pointing out the Communist propaganda hidden in New York City. Who knew John D. Rockefeller was really a communist, and that Isaiah’s timeless call to beat swords into plowshares is really an ancient “progressive” plot? He’s hilarious. Everyone does just laugh at this stuff, right?
September 17th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
You and your students may “laugh at this stuff” but I doubt Van Jones is laughing (unless his speaking fees have skyrocketed)or ACORN, who have been in Beck’s sights for some time.
Sure, Beck can be clownish, over the top, and cry those crocodile tears, but guess what?
About some of this “stuff” he has been dead on. ACORN is a rotten organization, corrupt through and through, and that they were paid $800,000 by the Obama campaign, and Obama said “judge me by who I associate with”…well, not good.
And Van Jones? He was a White House official exposed as a truther-petition signing radical.
Don’t be surprised if there is more to come.
September 17th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
Sorry, Acorn is not corrupt through and through, and even a stopped clock is right twice a day. I’m not really laughing at this stuff. Beck’s not a parodist. He’s a paranoid nut case. Did you watch that video about the “communist propaganda” in NYC. That you, Karl, could be persuaded by a guy who is serious about such stuff is the scary thing. And that really is what I’m saying: people like that having influence scares the daylights out of me. Father Coughlin, Joe McCarthy, Cleon Skousen, and now Glenn Beck. Yipes. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
September 17th, 2009 at 4:17 pm
And Karl, on Acorn, this says it well: With the “massive pillaging of America’s economic security and its control of American government by its richest and most powerful factions growing by the day, to whom is America’s intense economic anxiety being directed? To a non-profit group that devotes itself to providing minute benefits to people who live under America’s poverty line, and which is so powerless in Washington that virtually the entire U.S. Senate just voted to cut off its funding at the first sign of real controversy — could anyone imagine that happening to a key player in the banking or defense industry?”
September 17th, 2009 at 5:00 pm
[...] I think it’s sad anyone can take seriously a Glenn Beck legal claim based on the allegedly defamatory nature of a domain named “glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggilrl.com,” but I’m grateful at least for a First Amendment that, I believe, makes it very unlikely any such claim by Beck would prevail and that allows me to title a blog post “I don’t think Glenn Beck raped and murdered a young girl, but why won’t he deny it?” [...]
September 17th, 2009 at 5:45 pm
Sure, Glen Beck can be a real doofus. He’s borderline certifiable. But he was right about ACORN, and he was right about Van Jones.
About Cass Sunstein, and other things, well, he is off the rails.
Meanwhile, I know it’s easy for pfriedman to always trot out the class warfare rhetoric, but remember: these enterprising young journalists went to 4 ACORN offices on 2 coasts,(and more to come supposedly) with the same outlandish story, and got the virtually the same treatment.
“So, how can ACORN can we help you get a house of prostitution up and running, evade taxes, and bring in teenage El Salvadoran sex slaves?”
Unless of course those poor poverty stricken inner city folks simply are incapable of making reasonable moral distinctions, seeing as how they are poor and so downtrodden and all that.
Even Jon Stewart’s getting in on the act. Watch:
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-september-15-2009/the-audacity-of-hos
Of course, ACORN is not so powerless that it couldn’t get $800,000 from Obama’s campaign, or it and its various sub-groups being allocated $8+ BILLION (!) in stimulus money
As for the banking industry? Well, I for one wasn’t thrilled when we bailed the bankers out. Fortunately, many of them have paid back what the government gave to them…excuse me, FORCED on them.
Then again, you might try to go into a Chase office with a hidden camera and see if they will loan you dough for a whorehouse. That would be interesting.
September 18th, 2009 at 11:36 am
The bailout was “FORCED” on the bankers? Karl, where are you getting that? Do you think last September 14 the bankers at Lehman Bros. were grateful they weren’t in a position to have tens of billions of dollars FORCED on them? Do you think AIG would have preferred bankruptcy. I mean, apart from the fact it would’ve been a greater financial disaster for everyone, is there any evidence the banks themselves resisted taking government money?
September 18th, 2009 at 11:25 pm
test
September 19th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
So, Peter, my “test” comment gets published, but not my detailed evidence based refutation of your assertion in post 6.
September 19th, 2009 at 2:23 pm
test 2
September 19th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
Karl – I have not seen, nor do I know what happened to your detailed evidence. I do not moderate comments, though, I imagine, I have the capacity to remove comments I deem inappropriate. I would never, however, take down an argument, as opposed to something that wasn’t somehow utterly inappropriate (foul language, defamatory expressions, and the like). I’d love to see your evidence that the bailout was shoved down Goldman, Citi, and AIG’s throats. I have no doubt that if we do get banking regulation (like we had before Clinton did away with it), it will be over their screaming objections, but the money? Did they prefer Lehman’s fate? My guess is your comments were too long — I’ve noticed on other sites that’s a problem, though I’ve never had comments here that threatened to be too long. If you can’t post it, try it in parts, and if you still can’t, e-mail it to me at pbfriedmanATgmailDOTyouknow what.