Patches the Beaver v. AsteroidBooty.com [1]

A blog post on AsteroidBooty.com [2], an anonymous blog focused on "chronicles from outerspace, products that rock my world, and more," criticized the high price of children's books and contrasted the prices with the (asserted) easiness of writing the books. The post also included a link to the children's book "Patches the Beaver," making a joke about the possible sexual interpretation of the book's title. Along with this link, the post included an image of the book's cover, and a photograph of the book's author Shane Gauthier. Subsequent user comments also poked fun at the title of the book, adding comments about the author's appearance, possible sexual preferences, and his alleged lack of awareness of diversity and multiculturalism issues.

Gauthier's lawyer posted a comment on the blog threatening legal action against AsteroidBooty if the site operator did not remove the post and comments and issue a public apology. The defamation claims primarily involved content posted by the guest commentors; however, the threat stated that "[l]iability for publication of a defamatory statement extends to all those who participate in its dissemination." The comment also noted that damage awards for defamation claims can exceed $250,000.

The operator of AsteroidBooty said in another blog post [3] that she did not receive the comment at first as it seemed to have gotten mixed in with "400+ spam comments." She instead found out about the threat when her webhost called her and sent an e-mail asking her to either remove the content or send a counter-notice that she did not believe it was defamatory.

After locating and reading the threatening comment, the operator of AsteroidBooty removed the disputed content and issued an apology on her blog, noting [3] that "it was all in jest; so I have no problem taking it down. And most of the stuff I wrote was directed towards children’s books in general (not Shane)."