OPEN

If you’ve got a good case and you’re a communications company it’s a
crime to have to resort to the law – why can’t you explain your point
of view?

The case of a New York advertising agency (WKPA) suing a web designer over comments on his blog about what he thought were poor online strategies for a campaign to attract tourism to the state of Maine.

Steve Rubel is extensively quoted in the Advertising Age article about the case. You can’t get better than his advice:

• The first step is to contact the blogger and discuss the issue in a nonthreatening way. See if an agreement can be reached.
• Second,
  you might have to accept what you cannot change. It’s the bloggers’
  rights to communicate their opinions as long as the information was
  obtained through legal channels.
• Try to find a third party to broker a discussion between you and the blogger.
• Blog back, but only if you already have a blog.

Another good reason to have a blog for your company – to be able to respond to critics?

If you’ve got a good case and you’re a communications company it’s a crime to have to resort to the law – why can’t you explain your point of view?

Meanwhile, the old-world thinking ("crush the dissenting little guy" is how it’s seen) is prompting uproar on other blogs.

So vitriolic are come of the comments (‘We here at WKPA are way too stupid to understand how search engines work’ taunts James Robertson) that if the agency stands by this strategy for dealing with online critics it’ll be suing a lot more people before the month is out.