A Maine blogger who criticized the state’s tourism efforts has been hit with a $1 million lawsuit.
Tourism officials charge the blogger made false statements on his Web site.
“It’s a reflection of the extent to which businesses are taking critiques from the blogosphere very seriously,” John G. Palfrey, executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, told Boston.com.
The ad agency hired by the Maine Department of Tourism, Warren Kremer Paino Advertising, filed the suit. They claimed it violated the agency’s copyright and defamed it at the site of the blogger, Lance Dutson.
Dutson, an independent Web designer, launched his blog last fall to comment on technology and tourism issues.
Mr Dutson said that tourism was the state’s biggest industry but that it was “being run like a trailer park daycare on its 3rd notice from the Human Services people.”
Report by David Wilkening
