Yet more blog libel threats

Tim Ireland has just posted about a libel threat he has received from Donal Blaney, acting for Paul Staines, aka Guido Fawkes:

Recently, I wrote an article about Paul Staines (you know him better as 'Guido Fawkes') stealing images and bandwidth. Now I'm getting threatening emails from his lawyer, Donal Blaney (you can't see those, but you can see my replies).

To put it bluntly, I suspect that I am being targeted not because of what I said, but because of who I am.

Blaney appears to be very closely aligned to Staines personally, professionally and politically. He also appears to be an odd choice of lawyer for a libel case (if indeed one is truly in the offing), as his specialty/background is tax law.

Via Donal Blaney, Paul Staines has been badgering me to reveal my home address or retain the services of a lawyer in an effort to bully me into silence without true recourse to law.

I'm not going to get into the argument itself beyond commenting that Ireland's allegations against Guido seem to me to be both trivial and debatable. But Guido should debate them, or post his side of the argument, not issue libel threats to another blogger who he knows will not have the resources to face down legal threats easily.