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Lee Griffin About Lee: Former students' union president and intermitent blogger since the turn of the century, who's aim is to promote objective thinking and a break from partisan politics when discussing the issues of the day. Contact him.

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Supporting Dave Walker against Mark Brewer and his company's legal threats

Fri 25th Jul 2008 – (0 Comments)

Judge bringing down the hammer
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I'm not as much of a critic of libel law as other bloggers, Unity in particular, however the one area that does annoy me is the necessity to lay down threats of legal action at the doors of people before they have been able to prove one way or another if what they've said is libelous.

In this case Dave Walker, of several sites, has had to take down content spanning a couple of years to comply with a legal threat by Mark Brewer's company, a company which owns a book chain called SPCK. More over there seems to be a little bit of shadiness going on as Unity uncovers, with the company in particular seeking bankruptcy protection in the US.

On the morning of July 22nd 2008 he received a cease and desist letter threatening legal action unless he removed 75 posts from his Cartoon Church blog by lunchtime - i.e., half a day’s notice.

These 75 posts had reported the developing situation over a 2 year period in a UK book chain called SPCK, which had been taken over by a company run by Mark Brewer. Dave Walker’s was the main published source reporting the situation, asking questions about the management of the chain, and highlighting the treatment of the employees.

There's a facebook site you can join if you support the guy, it's not for us to really say whether what he posted about was libelous or not but surely no-one can agree that this kind of bullying should be so hard to fight before a case is even brought.

More information is (continually updated and) available at The Wardman Wire.

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Touches on: Bloggers under attack, USA, Authoritarianism, Hidden agenda, Over-reaction, Selfishness, Internet, Libel

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