The Loveland Connection is reporting that a Colorado man has been charged with two counts of criminal libel after allegedly posting comments about a former girlfriend and her lawyer on Craigslist.com's "Rants and Raves" section:

One of the major issues facing schools is whether they have authority to discipline their students for speech on the Internet.  In an article I wrote that will appear in the December 2008 issue of the Florida Law Review, I argue that public secondary schools have virtually no authority under the First Amendment to punish students for online speech.  I decided to write this article after hearing about cases all over the country where

Here is a simple, but often ignored, truth: if you publish online, whether it's a news article, blog post, podcast, video, or even a user comment, you open yourself up to potential legal liability.  It doesn't matter whether you are a professional journalist, hockey-mom, or an obscure blogger, if you post it, you'll need to be prepared for the legal consequences. 

The Arizona Star reports that the Tucson Greyhound Park has dropped its defamation lawsuit against blogger Karyn Zoldan of the End Tucson Greyhound Racing website and blog. Both parties agreed to dismissal of the suit, but Zoldan did not pay anything in return for the settlement.

I just updated one of the more frivolous entries in our legal threats database, which has now spurred a federal lawsuit.  While it is barely worth blogging about, I thought it might be valuable as a cautionary tale for those who believe sending cease-and-desist letters is a no-lose proposition.   

Los Angeles real estate developer Barry Shy and his development company, 5th St Loft, have sued Jessica Jordan and Alan Dylan, who reside in a building developed by Shy and run the website Truedowntown, the "unofficial" site for the Shybary Grand Loft in Los Angeles.  The lawsuit, which plaintiffs filed on June 17, 2008, claims that Jordan and Dylan libeled Shy and damaged his businesses by making disparaging comments about him.

Last week, Salisbury, Maryland Police Chief Allan Webster and Joe Albero, operator of the Salisbury News blog, reached a settlement in Webster's defamation and false light lawsuit, just hours before the case was scheduled for trial.