EFF: Video: How the Court System Is Abused to Chill Activist Speech
Video: How the Court System Is Abused to Chill Activist Speech One of the most pernicious forms of censorship in modern America is the abuse of the court system by corporations and wealthy individuals to harass, intimidate, and silence their critics. We use the term “Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation,” more commonly known as a “SLAPP,” to describe this phenomenon. With a SLAPP, a malicious party will file a lawsuit against a person whose speech is clearly protected by the First Amendment. The strategy isn’t to win on the legal merits, but to censor their victims through burdensome, distracting, and costly litigation. SLAPP suits often make spurious defamation claims and demand outrageous monetary penalties to bully their enemies. In EFF’s work, we’ve seen SLAPPs deployed against journalists and bloggers , cartoonists , and even people who have posted reviews on websites like Yelp and eBay . They’ve been used by election power players against their p...