Tom Williams Threatens Blog with Legal Action

Update Feb 21, 2008: It’s been almost a month since I wrote this post and as of this moment there are 63 comments on it. I have a lot of mixed feelings about this post. At first I thought, wow Tom is getting a bad wrap. But I’ve been reading the comments with an open mind and well now I don’t know.

A couple weeks ago Tom emailed me privately to express his concern about some of the comments. He asked that I take down defamatory comments, or he will be forced to take legal action. I read through all the comments, as did the content and executive team of b5media, and found one that I thought was over the line so I deleted it. Since then I haven’t been approving all comments. There have been two in the last couple days that I will not post.

After deleting the one comment, I told Tom and offered that he could be on my BlogTalkRadio show to give his side of the story. Tom hasn’t replied to that offer. This week I received a letter from GiveMeaning’s lawyers, which is now in the hands of our lawyers.

I stand by freedom of speech. I stand for open conversations. I can’t abide ad hominem attacks though.

I decided to update this post to let you know that I still read all the comments and my offer to Tom is still open. If Tom accepts I would have callers on the line unless he agrees.

I also still believe the idea of GiveMeaning is great, however I think there are legitimate questions about the site/company/foundation that need to be answered and addressed.

I would like to know if all the questions and criticisms can be answered. Right now, however, I have my doubts about that as well.