Marketing through legal force

Dr. Joseph Mercola, publisher of Mercola.com, an alternative health-care Web site and newsletter, has been forced to screen his U.K. readers from his negative opinions of Splenda.

"I am forced to block all my comments regarding Splenda from the UK. Tate & Lyle has assured me they will sue me if I do not. This is largely related to the liberal libel laws in the UK. What is perfectly legal in the United States is not in the UK, as freedom of speech is severely restricted over there," Mercola writes here.

Heck, all you need to do is read McLibel to get an idea for how oppressive/strict UK libel laws are.

The information is hardly unavailable, though; you don't have to be very sophisticated to know that you can read Google's cached copy (or any search engine's) of the blocked pages, and people who are more sophisticated will know about proxies and other simple means of redirecting their connection. I'm not defending Tate & Lyle; I'm just pointing out that the tiny step they're enforcing is ultimately ineffective.