Luke Ford has been chronicling the porn industry on his blog lukeford.net for nearly a decade. But it hasn’t always been as fun for him as it sounds.

“I don’t think there’s any doubt that I am the most sued blogger out there,” Ford said. “Overall I think it’s terrific that there are libel laws, because the alternative to a lawsuit is that someone would come and break my legs—or kill me.”

The writer has been sued five times in seven years, mainly for libel, resulting from stories plaintiffs deem false and reputation-damaging.

Since 2005, Ford has benefited from the legal assistance of Justin Levine, his pro-bono attorney. Levine feels strongly about protecting the freedom-of-speech rights of bloggers—in fact, he is a blogger at SoCalLawBlog.com.

Levine writes about American legal issues on his “blawg,” but has also
used the site for something he calls “Open Source Legal Motion.”

During Ford’s fourth libel suit (which ended up being privately settled this summer), with his client’s permission, Levine linked a rough draft of his defense motion on his blog, for anyone (not just lawyers) to improve upon.

He posted: “Maybe a layman just happens to study the “opinion defense” in libel law as a strange hobby and therefore knows about some obscure but powerful case law that I haven’t come across…. I figure its high
time the Internet did for the practice of law what it has been doing for the practice of journalism these past few years.”

Levine wasn’t nervous about making his arguments public to the plaintiff either. “Nobody can change what the law currently is or what the facts are in this case, so what difference could it make?” Opening up his argument to the wisdom of the crowd could only make his case stronger.

Ultimately, Levine wasn’t able to use the motion in court, in August he posted on his site that while he “would have loved to have charged into court and made an impassioned speech about Internet blogging freedoms,” he’s pleased that the dispute was settled out of court.

Levine also said that he’ll definitely consider using open source collaboration in future cases, perhaps even for Ford’s fifth lawsuit, which has yet to be resolved.

As for Ford, he said the legal process has treated him fairly thus far—a noteworthy comment considering he’s probably the blogosphere’s most-sued blogger.