French newspaper Liberation devoted it's front page yesterday to the story of a French blogger being pursued for defamation by his local Town Hall.
France apparently has the highest number of blogs of any European country - 3 million. Of those, 2 million are hosted by radio station Skyrock.
It should be no suprise that France has embraced blogging. This is the country that invented the idea of activist citizenship; the country that has mob collective protest as a central pillar of its democratic identity. It was made for solidarity blogging.
Meanwhile, Liberation also ran a leader comment alongside its report, treading the fine line between championing the blogosphere as a bastion of unfettered free speech and standing by the rule of law as applied farily across all media, new and old.
The law should certainly punish malevolent rumour, defamation and intimidation. The fact that a blog is run by an individual does not exempt it from the rules that apply to those who aspire, as the media does, to inform their fellow citizens ... But it is more important still that the law is not subverted by those who want to limit the field of free speech and fair comment. Blogs can be a powerful tool in the service of democracy.
The blog at the centre of the controversy is Monputeaux.com. (In French, of course.)
