Reply #293: Conrad Black would have loved this one! [View All]

Libel chill was his favourite tool. Now we have block chill, something that hadn't occurred to me.

When people stop expressing their opinions because they are afraid of what a private individual will do to them (libel chill: a plaintiff with deep pockets like Lord Tubby could have bankrupted anyone who wrote something negative about him, even where no libel occurred, and this had a definite effect on Canadian journalism back when he was still a Canadian corporate privateer), life is not good.

Self-censorship is fine when it means biting one's tongue so as not break a publicly recognized rule, whether it be a law or mere etiquette, but not when it means stifling one's self so as not to suffer privately-imposed consequences against which one has no recourse.