A Maine blogger is being sued by an advertising agency after he criticized the work the company was doing for the state's tourism board.

Lance Dutson of mainewebreport.com is being sued for defamation, libel and copyright infringement after he, among other things, pointed out that the sample phone number the agency used in advertisements was a phone sex line and not the state's tourism number. As the Media Bloggers Association points out, the lawsuit is nothing more than an attempt by a company with money trying to silence a critic without money.

After reading the Boston Globe article and Dutson's site, and based on my knowledge gained from my college media law class, the lawsuit will likely be laughed out of court. If Dutson's criticisms met the libel standard, then DailyKos would've been sued out of existence by Halliburton long ago. The copyright infringement charge will also likely be dismissed under both fair-use guidelines and the fact that the work was purchased by the Maine Office of Tourism -- a public agency.

The truth is that this lawsuit wouldn't have been filed if Dutson was a newspaper columnist and his work appeared in the paper. Bloggers are no different. I really hope that the ad agency's lawyers aren't aren't working on a contingency basis.