Cases of defamation have been on the rice in recent years. The onset of social media has made the situation worse and even more rampant and limitless. Recently I read a blog about my brother who happens to be a music producer and owns a music production company. James: my brother has worked with many music artists both upcoming and established artists. But he majorly deals with established artists and very talented and promising upcoming artists. In his line of work, he has made friends, enemies, and competitors, with the previous working day and night to see his downfall. James has however been resilient and kept his dealings with his clients so open and direct. However, this last tactic to tarnish his name and his company has left me infuriated and I certainly feel it is high time action was taken to bring an end to such malice.
An anonymous blogger has gone ahead and accused James of defrauding an upcoming artist his album production money. I happen to be his company accountant and we have made it public that all production money by artists is paid directly to the company account. No member of the company has the right to deal with solid cash from our clients. The said artist had only made a down payment for his album production. However, after the company’s officials discussed the value the said artist was to bring to the company, they decided not to sign him up. All cash received from the artist was duly refunded, and the bank statements are there to prove that transaction. This is a blog aimed at ruining the company’s reputation and the good record. However, all is not lost. After consultation with the company lawyer, the company has a few options to take in response to this. The very first move being to pull down the post.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
Steps to Pulling Down a Defamatory Post
The very obvious thing to do is ask the blogger to delete the defamatory article. This works if the blogger has a contact information. If not, it is quite quick and easy to contact the social network and inform them of the defamatory article and the wish to have t deleted from their platforms (Vamialis, 2013). In this case, Facebook and WordPress the publishing platforms. This request is accompanied by a court order or proof of defamation where possible (Collins, 2011). Once received, these platforms send a request to the page admins to have the blog removed. If this does not happen within several days, then the blogger has his platform suspended or removed totally from any operation. It is also possible to remove this article from search results for the sake of all other clients that may wish to engage with the company in future. If the company manages to sub-open the hosting website, the identity of the blogger can be known, which will be vital once the company takes legal action (O'Brien, 2001).
Legal Options
Though defamation cases may not be easy to pursue. Pursuing a defamation case means you need to prove beyond doubt that the blog or words against you were false and malicious. The company has enough proof that this was a defamation act. Defamation will be our legal argument. In the event of winning this case, the company automatically gets a court order to have the blog removed (Vamialis, 2013). This court order will be sent to the blog owner once we have identified him or her. Alternatively, if his or her identity remains anonymous, this court order will be sent to Facebook and WordPress legal teams requesting them to remove the blog from their networks.
References
Collins, M. (2011). The law of defamation and the Internet . Oxford University Press, Inc..
O'Brien, J. (2001). Putting a face to a (screen) name: The first amendment implications of compelling ISPs to reveal the identities of anonymous Internet speakers in online defamation cases. Fordham L. Rev. , 70 , 2745.
Vamialis, A. (2013). Online defamation: confronting anonymity. International Journal of Law and Information Technology , 21 (1), 31-65.
