Lessons and some murkiness from the DialAFlight saga

Most people first learned that DialAFlight was up to something when the high profile Travel Rants blog suddenly issued an unreserved apology to the online travel firm two weeks ago.

The legalese literally pouring from the post indicated that popular editor Darren Cronian was, as one person put it to us, "up to his neck in it".

A similar retraction has been posted by review forum Grumbletext.

The apology, retraction and removal of the comment appear to - fortunately for Cronian - have kept the libel courts away from his door.

The threat of £50,000 damages is a sum that would cause most mainstream publishers to shift nervously in their leather executive chairs, let alone a part-time yet talented travel blogger from Yorkshire.

But this is not a question of the mighty Goliath winning unfairly against a lowly David.

The identical comments which appeared on seven sites (three of which were removed immediately, four were not - triggering the subsequent legal moves) and which we have since seen as part of the legal writ, ticked almost every box in the libel area.

[Below is a grab from the comment on Ciao.co.uk. We have shaded the potentially libellous areas, some of which would be considered defamatory in the context of the whole post.]



Cronian, in his apology, admitted to not making the necessary checks and has since semi-retired from blogging (though one suspects not for long). We hope he returns...

With laws varying from country to country, DialAFlights litigation flurry highlights the sticky issue of review sites and blogs responsibility not only for their own writings, but also for readers' comments.

In the UK, a BBC libel and defamation guide states: "Almost uniquely in English law, in libel cases the burden of proof lies with the author/publisher and not the complainant and publishers have to be careful about comments others post on your site."

In the US, the Electronic Frontier Foundation argues that blog publishers are not considered liable for statements made by guest bloggers or comment-writers, although several lawsuits have been filed.

Meanwhile, DialAFlight, which said review sites and blogs perform a useful function, hasn't been shy about taking legal action before.

In September last year, we cited a DialAFlight statement that the company had initiated legal proceedings against Flight Centre UK for infringement of its DialAFlight trademark on Google.

Anyway, the main point here is that a travel company has taken the most extreme measure it can in order to remove unsavoury comments on blogs and forums, regardless of the profile of the 'publisher'.

Those that thought bloggers were 'protected' from the legal might of corporations must take note - you are not free of legal responsibility for what is published on your website.

Unfortunately, on countless occasions over the past few years the conversation at events (including, ironically, one memorable exchange at Cronian's TravelBlogCamp last November) has often turned to how bloggers are immune because of their size or lack of overall influence.

Some might argue DialAFlight's recent actions are aggressive - that the comments were buried in ageing posts, where they are unlikely to be found again.

Excellent SEOed sites, which the four in question undoubtedly are, do not have that luxury.

Nevertheless, DialAFlight parent company, Lotus Group, has defended its recent actions.

In comments not used on our original story, but certainly worth publishing here, MD Peter Stephens told Travolution:

"In our business there will always be grumbles and every travel company will get a few brickbats as well as a few bouquets.

"However we draw the line at allowing a competitor to paste highly defamatory material about us on the internet."

"In this case we tried very hard over a period of time to get the issue sorted out including posting an invitation on each of the sites for the poster to contact us if it was a genuine complaint so that we could investigate.

"It then became pretty clear that this was not the action of a disgruntled holidaymaker at all. But simply a disingenuous attempt to smear a competitor.

"We would prefer not to have taken this action but the websites involved, as they have admitted, did not respond to our polite requests for the issue to be sorted out."

Fair enough. Lessons learned all-round. Story complete.

But is that end of the tale?

In the midst of researching the story this week we came across some other interesting information.

It turns out that in the past, DialAFlight has been involved with a service in the US known as PayPerPost.

PayPerPost, according to its website, allows bloggers to do the following: "Get paid for blogging. Write about web sites, products, services, and companies and earn cash for providing your opinion and valuable feedback to advertisers. Disclosure required".

DialAFlight has admitted to Travolution to using the service for a short while. It no longer does so.

[Some examples - and even a comment on Travel Rants!]

Stephens again: "A couple of years ago companies were getting bloggers to write articles about them to help with search engine positioning which is really just another form of PR . We tried it briefly but it never worked particularly well for us."

Someone this week suggested to us that this was, in the light of recent legal moves by DialAFlight, tantamount to a word beginning with 'H' and having nine letters.

And this is where it gets murky for some people.

In general terms, when a company pays bloggers to write positive posts about them, does it have the right to kick up a fuss when negative comments appear elsewhere?

We'll leave that question to be answered by you lot...

[Comments will, of course, be moderated ;-) ]

[Additional material from Dennis Schaal]