At the Blog camp at Mumbai on February 20, 2010, a discussion by Monik Pamecha (Twitter @monikinom) took a very interesting turn. The incident where blogger Chyetanya Kunte was forced to offer an apology on certain comments made against a famous media personality was being debated hotly by a few bloggers, who were trying to find ways and means to avoid / prevent such incidents from happening in the future.
I did recall that there were provisions in the Cyber Laws of the country that prevent defamation of other persons and that got me thinking on this issue. Just as someone remarked at the blog camp, with every freedom, there are responsibilities. So too with the Freedom of Speech. While our Constitution does grant us the freedom of speech, we must remember not to transgress our rights and cross the thin line between freedom and its abuse.
Defamation, also known as slander (spoken) and libel (written), basically means spoiling someone's name or bringing disrepute to any person. Cyber defamation would obviously mean spoiling someone's name, or bringing disrepute to any person by means of cyberspace, including social media, blogs, websites, emails, bulletin boards and like.
Bloggers must take care not to let their anger get the better of them, since it is very easy to let-off steam in a blog or a like social media, on an impulse or in the heat of the moment. Also I understand that the blogger would be held responsible for comments posted by readers on a blog, so comment moderation is also an area that bloggers must be careful of.
I do suggest that with more and more people (including celebrities and media personalities) embracing cyber media like social media (twitter, face book etc), websites and blogging in a big, such conflicts are just a precursor of things to come. Individual bloggers will never be able to stand up to big corporations. So blog smart, moderate smarter.
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