A Bad Legal Strategy and an Even Worse PR Strategy

I'm feeling generous this morning, so I'm going to assume that this is the work of a lone, off-the-reservation attorney at Goldman Sachs well past retirement age who has absolutely no idea how the blogosphere works.

For a brief insight into what happens next, I would refer the idiot who filed suit against the blogger who set up goldmansachs666.com (known as Facts About Goldman Sachs) to the McLibel case, a lawsuit brought by McDonald's in the U.K.--where free speech protections are not nearly as strong as they are in the U.S.--against Greenpeace activists, and which continues to tarnish the company's reputation to this day.

In this case, Goldman has absolutely no chance of prevailing on the merits--the lawsuit is presumably an attempt to intimidate the critic in question into silence, since its claims of intellectual property rights infringement are entirely spurious--and will accomplish four things: first, it will drive more traffic to the critic's site, ensuring that many more people are exposed to his attacks on the company; and second, it will force many other bloggers to link to the beleaguered critic, ensuring that many, many, many more people are exposed to the attacks on the company; third, it will ensure that the criticisms make the jump from the blogosphere to the mainstream media; and fourth, it will make Goldman Sachs look like a clueless bully.

In other words, it's a dumbass legal strategy and a catastrophic public relations strategy.

Other than that, it's a smart play.