<
https://www.techdirt.com/2025/07/09/litigious-company-demands-removal-of-a-tweet-linking-to-an-article-about-how-litigious-they-are/>
"It’s not every day you watch a company faceplant so theatrically in public,
but Cloud Innovation’s latest stunt deserves a slow clap. Cloud Innovation,
which you’d probably never heard of unless you’re neck-deep in African IP
registry battles (stay tuned), just managed to make a legal play whose end
result should be calling a lot more attention on its own legal actions and
threats.
The move? They sent a cease and desist letter to Joe Hall—demanding Hall delete
a tweet. Not a tweet where he said anything defamatory. Not a tweet where he
made false claims. Indeed, not a tweet where he said anything at all. Just… a
tweet with a link. Literally, a URL to a
Medium article discussing the
AfriNIC saga, in which Cloud Innovation is a central player.
That’s the entire complaint: someone shared a link.
The letter, signed illegibly by someone calling themselves “Legal Counsel,”
gives Hall 24 hours to remove his tweet sharing Emmanuel Vitus’s
Medium
article “AfriNIC: Hope, Hijack, and the Harsh Lessons of African
Multistakeholderism” or face a lawsuit for “defamation, unlawful publication
and dissemination of defamatory article.”
So, of course: you should go read that article. Cloud Innovation seems
desperate for you not to. It’s also both a fascinating and depressing deep dive
into what happened with AfriNIC—something I never would have learned about if
Cloud Innovation hadn’t been so hellbent on making sure I never saw it.
Still let’s pause here to appreciate the legal theory being advanced by Cloud
Innovation: that sharing a link to an article someone else wrote makes you
liable for defamation. This is roughly equivalent to claiming that the person
who hands you a newspaper is responsible for everything printed inside it."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
