Last week, we received a legal notice from Star India asking us to not make "repeated references" to Peter Mukerjea as the former CEO of Star India, in the context of the case of a case involving his wife Indrani Mukerjea. A copy of the legal notice is below, and the notice was particularly strange given the fact that we've not reported on this particular case because of its lack of relevance from a digital ecosystem point of view. After we pointed out to Star India that the last MediaNama story to reference Peter Mukerjea on MediaNama was in 2013, (and, by the way, even that only referred to Peter Mukerjea as the founder of INX Media), Star India withdrew its notice. A quick opinion on how the notice (a copy below) might be viewed in the context of defamation, from Apar Gupta. @nixxin @MishiChoudhary 1. By itself reference is not defamatory; 2. Only when link is made between entity and person; 3. Repetition is key. — Apar Gupta (@aparatbar) September 4, 2015 However, we thought we'd use this as an opportunity to discuss criminal defamation and legal notices, especially in the context of the Internet. Chilling effect of legal notices There are threats of legal action (we've received some while working on some stories), legal notices (we got one from Monster for this story) and then there are lawsuits. Each of these makes people err on the side of caution: it means I'll be afraid to say something, even though it may not violate…
