Garrison Keillor Sues MNSpeak.com

I just found out that Garrison Keillor is suing, or threatening to sue MNSpeak.com. The blogsphere is ranting the headline that our handy mnspeak.com blogger threatened, one I won't repeat here for fear it will add to the Google count.

This actually infuriates me. And not because of Keillor. Insteand, because suddenly this bastion of liberal politics, humor, good sense, and a spokesman for liberalism to the mainstream of middle America, is getting attacked because he is executing his power under the law.

It seems to me that the blogsphere, as great as it can be, also has some expectation that it is beyond or above libel or copyright law. I'm not particularly familiar with what can be deemed satire, etc...but the "Praire Ho Companion" t-shirt, especially if it is being sold, is undoubtedly making money off of someone else's established work. And in a way that he deems inappropriate. And instead of saying "Ok, crossed that line..." this blogger has decided to call Keillor out.

This is embarrassing. I remember the first time I heard a friend defend P2P file sharing of MP3s and neither of us could define exactly why it wasn't taking money out of the hands of bands we loved. But if you tell that to someone that does it, they treat you like a Republican.

Frankly, there is nothing about being a liberal that means you don't believe in intellectual property, the rights of an artist to control his material, or the simple right to be respected if your views don't jive with the person making money off your name. This isn't a question of Keillor vs. Bloggers. It's a question of what's legal. And since none of us know exactly what's legal or illegal about what our mnspeak.com gent did... let's back off.

I'd also like to add...his response to Keillor was a threat that will be karmically bad. The idea that you shouldn't mess with a blogger or he'll simply smear your name... it's a dangerous line of thinking. I'm not saying Keillor is being "cool." I'm saying he's within his rights, and smearing him because you don't like what he's up to, or because you weren't smart enough to know the limits of intellectual property infringement; that makes you no better than the Republicans. It means: "I have a bullhorn, don't mess with me."

Since when is the Blogsphere supposed to be used as a threat? It's where we spread ideas. If we're willing to smear a man who is among our best representatives in the red states, over a T-Shirt, we really are missing the point.

Shame on the Daily Kos for making it worse, by the way. Never like to say that, because I love them over them. But that's a big miscue.