Feel the power

Sweet. I didn't even have to blog about this.

Texas bloggers: Retract your claws. Vicki Truitt means you no harm.

The Keller state representative has been public enemy No. 1 for bloggers for the past three weeks because of a bill she pre-filed relating to defamatory comments on Web sites.

It turns out Truitt had meant to file a much narrower bill that was not directed at bloggers. She now plans to enter substitute language in January.

But the allegations that bloggers have hurled at Truitt, ranging from personal attacks to vulgar rants, will apparently live online for some time.

"When you're a public elected official, you better be prepared to be slammed, and if you're not willing to then you better not be in the business," Truitt said.

Truitt filed House Bill 129 on Nov. 13, the first day lawmakers could file bills for the legislative session that begins in January. The bill specified that the author of defamatory statements expressed on the Internet would be subject to the same libel limitations as the author of any other statement "in any other written or graphic form."

Outrage on the blogosphere was quick.

Eileen Smith, editor of Austin-based InThePinkTexas.com, ripped into the bill two days later in a post titled "My Other Blog is Yo Mama." The post now appears on the first page of a Google search for "Vicki Truitt."

More than 30 readers commented on the post, many heckling Truitt. Noting that if the bill passed it wouldn't go into effect until September, reader Roaring Gnome suggested, "I think you should dedicate all posts after Sept. 1, 2007 to making fun of Vicki Truitt's absurdly big hair. It would NOT be a false statement, so I think you'd be covered."

I love Eileen's comment about that:

I can't decide which is funnier. The fact that the Star-Telegram printed 'yo mama,' or that commenter 'Roaring Gnome' was actually quoted as a source.

Actually, I think the comments to the story itself are pretty funny, given what the whole fuss was about. Either way, we truly do live in wondrous times.

Truitt said the bill stemmed from a talk with a constituent who had gone through a messy divorce. His ex-wife had put personal information about him on DontDateHimGirl.com, a Web site where women post photos and descriptions of men they say are dishonest or deceitful.

Truitt said the bill was designed to allow people legal recourse if someone knowingly publishes information about them online that could lead to identity theft.

"We're just trying to keep people from getting mad at somebody and putting their Social Security number and credit card numbers out there," Truitt said.

After discussing the bill with the Star-Telegram, however, Truitt said she reread the bill and decided it was probably too broad. She said she would narrow its scope.

"We're trying to protect people's private information," she said.

Truitt's legislative director, Dan Sutherland, said that legal advisers had suggested broadening the bill's language to include all defamatory comments, but that stifling bloggers or anyone else on the Internet was never their intention.

"In the conversations I had with legislative counsel, we never talked about blogs," Sutherland said. "Apparently the people who write blogs think it was targeted at them, so we're trying to clarify it."

Sutherland described the blogger reaction to the bill as "amazing" but noted that allowing public comments to help reshape proposed legislation is part of the democratic process.

"It's not unusual for any representative to file something, and once people start reading it, they bring things to our attention they hadn't thought of or got lost in the translation," Sutherland said.

Yeah, you could say that.

The story lists (but does not always hyperlink) various blogs that reacted to the initial news of Truitt's bill. Which is nice but not terribly useful, as even for the sites they link to it's just to the index instead of the posts in question. Why they didn't use Technorati or Google Blog Search for a more complete accounting I couldn't say.

Posted by Charles Kuffner on December 06, 2006 to That's our Lege | TrackBack