P.s. since one might hope that Eric and Venkat would be concerned about getting things right, I think it might also be useful for them to take a look at Golb’s own account of his trial, in which he quite thoroughly presents the background of the case and the different arguments on both sides. This document is available at:

http://www.sirpeterscott.com/images/golbstatement.pdf

The authors seem to uncritically accept the notion that Golb was lodging, as the prosecution repeatedly put it throughout the trial, “false accusations” at the “victims” of his campaign. But Golb’s email exchanges with his own brother at the time of his criminalized conduct show that his intent was literally, as he phrased it, to “embarrass” certain individuals by “informing people of the truth, which many of them might not know.” These emails were concealed by the prosecutors, who instead carefully selected little “malicious”-sounding phrases here and there (e.g. “they will realize that they have a devoted adversary who is out to get them”) to assault Golb’s character. For the emails in question, see the briefs and other information documenting the case at:

http://raphaelgolbtrial.wordpress.com/

Further, the problem with accuracy here (who is smearing whom?) is compounded by another fact that the authors don’t mention, which is that the trial judge ruled, in a pretrial order, that “neither good faith nor truth is a defense to any of the crimes charged.” Despite this ruling, the prosecution was allowed to repeatedly accuse Golb of making “false accusations,” but Golb’s lawyers were systematically blocked, pursuant to the ruling, from introducing any evidence that his accusations were in fact true. This patently unfair manner of proceeding (which in effect allowed a disguised criminal libel prosecution to proceed with a lower burden of proof than what is required in any civil libel case) should suffice to cast at least some doubt on the claim that Golb’s intent was to defame people rather than expose their alleged misconduct.