Is opinion on the internet now subject to legal restrictions? In essence, are we all screwed?

Factual Questions
1

From The Atlantic: NC has decided that this man’s blog, which dares to suggest that the Paleo diet might work for others since it worked for him, is not covered by free speech and crosses the line into doctor/patient territory.

I am boggling. I am boggled. I am flabberghasted and other words that mean :eek::rolleyes::smack:.

We know from one of Cecil’s columns why homeopathyis tolerated by the government. So why not this guy? What’s really happened that this guy is suddenly our new free-speech banner-man? And if this somehow passes, is it going to set a standard for anyone’s opinion on the 'net? 'cause, oddly enough, I don’t think there are enough lawyers to cover that.

I am…befuddled.

2

Well, that article is spinning hard enough to generate blackout level G forces, so it is a bit difficult to figure out what the facts here really are. Whatever is actually going on, I am pretty sure that the North Carolina courts do not have the power to stop people (even North Carolinians) from expressing their opinions, even about dietary matters, on the internet, or anywhere else. It seems like the standard right wing tactic of telling a distorted, partial version of some story in order to draw morals about how gubimint regulation of anything is always bad.

Incidentally, I could not get the link to load at all in Firefox, either getting a blank screen (twice) or a Washington Post login screen. No trouble in IE though. I guess open source software is too hippieish for George Will to tolerate.

3

Hm. Opens right up for me on Firefox 16 on Linux.

(Yes, I run a beta version of Firefox. In my experience, it’s no less stable than the release versions I used to run.)

4 


Trying 204.141.87.16...
Connected to a1757.g.akamai.net.
Escape character is '^]'.
HEAD / HTTP/1.1
HOST: www.washingtonpost.com

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: **Apache-Coyote/1.1**
Eomportal-Instance: 54
ETag: eef85c1f-7ccf-455f-8b69-b8ba73814328
Content-Type: text/html;charset=UTF-8
X-Cnection: close
Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:45:17 GMT
Connection: keep-alive
Set-Cookie: client_region=0;Expires=Thursday, 27-September-2012 20:55:17 GMT; path=/; domain=.washingtonpost.com
Set-Cookie: X-WP-Split=X;Expires=Thursday, 01-January-1970 00:00:00 GMT; path=/; domain=.washingtonpost.com

I had no problem viewing the article in Firefox, BTW. (Even running on (gasp) Linux! :eek:)

5

Anyway, it sounds like this guy is getting dinged for something like practicing medicine without a license, not merely expressing his opinion.

But it sounds like a pretty nonsensical case to me.

6

Anyone can send a letter warning someone to stop something. They can even put it on legal, or government, or government lawyer letterhead.

Whether that threat goes beyond a nasty warning letter is not clear. The article suggests all he got was a nasty letter from these guys, http://www.ncbdn.org/ , who are mandated to threaten and collect money in the fine tradition of regulatory boards everywhere. Whether they would follow through on a lawsuit to someone who obviously falls into the “free speech” category - we shall see. Regardless, it seems the guy has taken issue with their letter, characterized it as threatening his rights, and launched a preemptive lawsuit.

So rather than being on the receiving end of anything more than a nasty legal threat, the guy is in fact launched a lawsuit and seems to (a) be carrying on and (b) has not taken down his blog’s old posts.

So it’s hard to see how he is being trampled by big government, other than giving the Right a posterchild case on the distinction between “medical advice” and “free speech”.