Poliblog Perspective

Just under a fortnight ago I looked at how the public profile of Mr Usmanov, the “strategic stakeholder” in Arsenal FC who now wants to buy the whole shooting match, has been vastly increased by schillings’ Reputation Management Lawyers attempts to reduce it.

I thought I would revisit the “Blog Buzz” charts to see if the story has retained its traction. Here they are. You can see that the buzz for both went down at the weekend - as we would expect - but that the interest is increasiung again three weeks after Mr Usmanov had Schillings start sabre-rattling against websites expressing their opinions.

Buzz for Mr Alisher Usmanov

Buzz for Schillings Reputation Management Lawyers

Wrapping-up

These charts are probably now being driven by the interest in the international media in the unbalanced status of UK Libel Law when it comes to free expression on the Internet, rather than the initial outrage at a number of websites being closed down simply by the issuing a threat of legal action.

It is my hope that - now we will not be having a general election, and hopefully have a chastened and less bombastic government - there will be an attempt from somewhere to reform UK Law to protect free expression on the Internet to at least the same degree as is the case in print.

We are now back where we started, since all the websites taken down by Schillings actions are back up

It is time to stop persecuting publishers.

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