PD tries to hush Abe Zaidan

The Plain Dealer/Northeast Ohio Media Group has threatened to sue retired BJ political columnist Abe Zaidan for publishing a short clip of a 40-minute video that the paper had shown online - and then removed. Abe put it on his liberal Internet blog, Plunderbund.

The flap involved the PD's editorial board's group interview of Gov. Kasich, Democratic candidate Ed FitzGerald and Green Party candidate Anita Rios.

The BJ did the same thing to Harry Liggett and John Olesky when the BJ Alums blog told the world about now-retired reporter Jim Carney’s 3-day suspension over his dealings with a person involved with one of his stories. It’s a way for the big bad companies with attorneys to frighten little guys disseminating information they don’t like.

So they use copyright laws, and they’re within their rights to bully little people with it, to keep others from doing to them what newspapers do to other businesses in newspaper articles. 

Interesting, huh?

I ran into the same thing with a bad construction company, which threatened a slapsuit if I didn’t recant my complaint to the Better Business Bureau about its shoddy work. They can afford the legal fees cost; they know you can’t. The company went out of business a year or so later.

It’s the cost of tilting at windmills, which I have done all my life.