Bad Science's Ben Goldacre - legal threat

[Fortis]

For those BAUTers from the little island on the eastern side of the pond, I thought that I'd draw your attention to a spat that has developed between Ben Goldacre (of Bad Science (http://www.badscience.net/), and his weekly column in the Grauniad) and Jeni Barnett & LBC Radio.

She spent ~40 minute on a tirade against the MMR vaccination (where she demonstrated her ignorance on the subject) as part of her radio broadcast. Ben placed the extracted soundfile on his web site along with a comment highlighting the damage that this does to vaccination campaigns (in the UK the incidence of measles has increased by ~1/3 over the last year.) Ben is now being threatened by lawyers from LBC (http://www.badscience.net/2009/02/legal-chill-from-lbc-973-over-jeni-barnetts-mmr-scaremongering/). If anyone else agrees that her broadcast was both barking, and irresponsible, you can complain to OFCOM here (http://www.ofcom.org.uk/complain/).

[BigDon]

Isn't this sort of like when a particular spyware company tried to hit Spybot S&D with a cease and desist order?

[Fortis]

Isn't this sort of like when a particular spyware company tried to hit Spybot S&D with a cease and desist order?
If they actually move beyond the theatening stage, and bring a court case, I get the feeling that the publicity would not be good for LBC and their parent company, Global Audio. They may be able to demonstrate that the soundfile exceeded what was allowable under "Fair Use", (though it is only when you hear the unrelenting nature of the tirade that you comprehend the full impact that this kind of broadcast can have,) but it would provide an opportunity to expose the irresponsible nature of this broadcast to a wider public. She doesn't even know that colds and flu are different things (she asked one caller why, if vaccinations did any good, how come they were suffering from a cold when they had had a flu jab...)