Singapore defamation actions stir up political blogosphere

Over the last week, three separate actions by political and business leaders in Singapore against a political Web site and a blogger have sent everyone scrambling for their defamation textbooks.

These have unearthed some issues...

Bloggers and Web sites are now weighing whether it is ever wise to come out into the open instead of remaining anonymous.

Web site moderators also are wondering the extent to which they are required to moderate comments (as opposed to posts) which are posted on their Web sites by unknown third parties. The more successful the Web site, the more comments they attract and possibly, the more problems for moderators.

Plaintiffs need to weigh whether to ask for damages, apologies, take-downs and other information. Push too much and a Web site may just fight back.

Defendant Web sites also are faced with the situation of whether to accept a take-down request (and incur the wrath of the online community) or risk the whole hog in one messy armageddon.

I suspect much more ink will be spilled on these analyses in the coming days.