It still seems to me that The Ridgefield Press has a very legitimate case, as a couple of us noted earlier. Sony has libelled them, no two ways about it.
As amazing as the stupidity of Sony’s stunt is in the first place, it compounds it to assign their fake critic to a real, if obscure, publication. If they didn’t care whether people recognized the newspaper or not, why didn’t they make up that name, too? I suppose they could claim that they thought they WERE making up the name, and it was just a coincidence that there was a real newspaper by that name, but I doubt that would fly, even in US court (Some other countries, notably the UK, have stricter libel laws).
I’d still love to see Sony have to pay damages to The Ridgefield Press.
Yeah, a comment from the real lawyers might be in order here.