Book Review: Blogging & Tweeting without Being Sued: A Global Guide to the Law for Anyone Writing Online, by Mark Pearson

Mark Pearson Blogging & Tweeting without Being Sued: A Global Guide to the Law for Anyone Writing Online. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2012. 222 pp.What makes the twenty-first century truly global? To this question, journalism and mass communication educators and students most likely will respond, "The Internet." Few of those outside journalism and mass communication will demur. No matter what we are doing on the Internet, we are engaging in global communication-wittingly or unwittingly.Journalism professor Mark Pearson, formerly of Bond University and currently of Griffith University in Australia, is keenly aware of the Internet's transnational impact on our communication in its legal context. His "small book," titled Blogging & Tweeting without Being Sued, is for those social media users who tend to ignore their status as "international publishers" (p. ix).Pearson, who specializes in media law, notes, "My aims are modest: to introduce you to some common legal principles that broadly apply to online publishing in many parts of the world and to bring them to life with the stories of bloggers and social media users who have encountered them" (p. x).These days, more books on the law of social media are on the market. For example, Social Media and the Law (Daxton R. Stewart, ed., 2013) and Social Media and the Law (Kathryn L. Ossian, ed., 2013) have been published this year. The former is "a guidebook for communication students and professionals," while the latter targets law practitioners as a legal treatise. The publication of these and other social media law books should be hardly surprising. As a New York judge stated in 2012, "The reality of today's world is that social media, whether it be Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Google+ or any other site, is the way people communicate" (People v. Harris, 945 N.Y.S.2d 505, 507 n.3, N.Y. Crim. Ct. 2012).What sets Pearson's book apart from other social media books? It is globally encompassing ("Let's think globally"), and it is refreshingly informative and readable. Nearly all the major topics are examined in the nine-chapter book: defamation (Ch. 2), free speech versus fair trial (Ch. 3), anonymous speech (Ch. 4), privacy (Ch. 5), con- fidentiality (Ch. 6), hate speech (Ch. 7), copyright (Ch. 8), and censorship and national security (Ch. 9).Chapter 1: "Down to Basics" surveys the risks of "going global in a flash" by high- lighting several Internet cases. It touches on "conflict of laws," "publication" in libel law, "public interest" (the public has a stake) versus "public's interest" (the public is just curious), and other significant legal concepts.American law is treated more extensively in the book than is the law of other coun- tries. The defamation chapter is a case in point. Pearson discusses Section 230 of the U.S. Communications Decency Act that immunizes Internet Service Providers (ISPs) from liability for third parties' comments. He also points out the American "actual malice" rule as a uniquely media-friendly defense against libel lawsuits by public figures. In this connection, he could have more clearly differentiated the constitutional malice (knowing falsity or reckless disregard for the truth) in the First Amendment law from the common law malice (spite or ill will).Pearson is correct: "The First Amendment doesn't have a passport." As an illustra- tion, he tells the story of the U.S.-based blogger Gopalan Nair, a native of Singapore. Nair was jailed in Singapore for sixty days for blogging his bare-knuckled criticisms of a Singaporean judge. …