In 2003 Barbara Streisand sued Pictopia.com for $50 in order to have satellite pictures of her beach front property taken down. The suit backfired, because as soon as the suit became public, the pictures became extremely popular on the internet. The explanation was that as soon as Streisand admitted she didn't want people to see the pictures, it made everybody else want to see them more.
Barry Ritholtz has a post today about MBIA, an muni bond insurance company, that is suing analyst Bill Ackman for making "untrue" statements about their solvency. As Ritholtz points out, it isn't a good sign for the company that they are reduced to suing their critics.
The parallels between this suit and the Streisand effect are obvious. In the internet age, the best way to deal with criticism like this is to downplay and discredit it. Overreactions such as this silly suit will only lend more publicity to the original criticism.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment