When Jason Kottke posted audio of Ken Jennings losing on Jeopardy, it instantly became (in)famous in the blogosphere. Unfortunately, Sony’s legal team took notice of the audio as well, and socked Jason with a Cease and Desist letter to take it down. He complied with their demands, however I’m pretty sure that they’re not going to let Jason go so easily.
He wrote today on his weblog how his legal troubles with Sony don’t appear to be over. He also discussed how situations like this make him question keeping his weblog around, for what happens if he does get sued for multi-millions? Jason’s just an individual blogger and can’t afford the legal troubles huge corporations can handle.
This is extremely unfortunate, because the blogosphere is around in order to call out the Media’s bullshit and draw attention to news stories that might have fallen through the cracks. Jason was just providing his readers with a tidbit of information about one of the stories of the moment, and in no way was making a profit from posting that audio file on his weblog. It didn’t take away from any of Sony’s money, and in fact, probably made even more people watch that showing of Jeopardy which increased Sony’s bottom line.
Bloggers need to be able to express themselves, or else weblogs will become another moderated media outlet just like everything else.
