Jason Calacanis loses it

Being bought by AOL doesn’t seem to have mellowed Weblogs Inc. founder Jason Calacanis any — in fact, it seems to have riled him up even more. He recently posted a rant on his blog about another blog network called Creative-Weblogging.com, and how they “stole” his html code. Among other things, Jason says this makes them “look like a complete low-rent idiot,” then goes on to spray the other network with invective, saying “these slime buckets” recently raised some money and “whoever these loser investors are they should do some due diligence” because they are “investing in a bunch of worthless lies and cheats [and] whatever money you gave them is probably embezzled right now.” He finishes off by saying “if people think I’m going to get soft just because we were acquired they are sadly, and profoundly, mistaken. I’d tell you idiots you would be hearing from my lawyers, but at this point you should expect a call from AOL’s lawyers.” (The founder of Creative Weblogging has a response here). As more than one person has pointed out, including Ian Betteridge, these comments are clearly libelous and defamatory, and probably actionable. In any case, they are well outside the range of normal criticism, regardless of any similarities between the two websites. If borrowing the look and feel of a website or even some of the html code is illegal, than there are a lot of criminals out there.