Blogger Sued for Posts Criticizing Maine’s Department of Tourism

Lance Dutson, who posts about Maine tourism at the Maine Web Report, has been sued for defaming the Maine Department of Tourism and violating its advertising agency’s copyright, according to a story in the Boston Globe. “He has written commentaries ridiculing the state’s tourism efforts and, last month, he posted a ‘rough draft’ advertisement pulled from Maine’s Department of Economic and Community Development website showing a collage of iconic images of the Maine seacoast, woodlands, and ski slopes, with a dummy phone number that turned out to connect to a line promoting a phone sex service,” the Globe’s Robert Weisman writes. “The agency had inadvertently placed the phone number on the draft advertisement for a presentation made to state tourism officials.”

Dutson is fighting back. He writes on his Web site:

This is crap, total crap and I’m not going to fold, not at this point, They’ve already screwed with me and my family so much, and I will not be bullied into discontinuing my work here. This state agency is wasting money, telling stories, and paying subcontractors who seem more focused on spending their time and money bludgeoning critics with legal threats and lawsuits rather than working to promote Maine tourism.

The entire complaint against Dutson can be found here. And a sampling of the bloggers coming to his defense can be found here.

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