While Techdirt's latest legal battle is taking part mostly in California courts, the tech site is finding support in D.C.'s tech and political circles.
In January, online news site Techdirt was sued for $15 million by Shiva Ayyadurai, who claims to have invented email. In the months before, Techdirt had written multiple times about Ayyadurai's claims and took a stand on the topic. Ayyadurai alleges that the site was overly critical and sued accordingly. Of note, Ayyadurai is being represented by the same lawyer Peter Thiel hired in the Gawker lawsuit that shut the site down.
Tonight, at an event at the Glen Echo Group's offices near Farragut North, various techies and politicos in Washington, D.C. are hosting a fundraiser in support of Techdirt. Organizers include Facebook's Brooke Oberwetter, former Facebook employee Tim Sparapani, former Sen. Ron Wyden staffer Josh Lamel and PR pro Beau Phillips.
"Free speech is a foundation of this country and (strategic lawsuits against public participation) put us on a very slippery slope," said Glen Echo Group founder and CEO Maura Corbett in a statement. "Unless and until we stop SLAPPs at the federal level, they will continue to be used as weapons to stifle public debate, civic participation and bully press platforms like Techdirt into silence."
The term weapons there is mostly likely a pointed look at other lawsuits like the Peter Thiel-backed lawsuit from wrestler Hulk Hogan against Gawker, which bankrupted the company. When Techdirt was first served the lawsuit and announced the news organization would be fighting back, they noted that a similar defamation claim backed by Ayyadurai's attorney Charles Harder put Gawker out of business, which is a "much more well-resourced company," the team noted.
"So, in our view, this is not a fight about who invented email. This is a fight about whether or not our legal system will silence independent publications for publishing opinions that public figures do not like," Techdirt editor Mike Masnick wrote in January. "And here's the thing: this fight could very well be the end of Techdirt, even if we are completely on the right side of the law."
Now it looks like the team is turning D.C. for help. One such Silicon Valley company you can expect to see at the D.C. fundraiser is Yelp.
"Yelp is fiercely committed to protecting online freedom of speech and has abhorred the rise of frivolous lawsuits for online defamation, especially in the form of SLAPPs," said Yelp's director of public policy Laurent Crenshaw in a statement. "We've been at the forefront of efforts to enact a federal anti-SLAPP law to protect all Internet users and platforms like Techdirt, who have the constitutional right to voice their opinions online."
Image used via CC0 Public Domain — credit tpsdave
