Pinoy problogger Abe Olandres is stepping down as Blog Herald editor due to a lawsuit.  I was reading J. Angelo Racoma’s blog late yesterday and found a few details about the root of the problem as described by Abe.

I run a fairly small start-up web hosting here in the Philippines. One of our former clients runs a forum that we used to host. Several members of that forum were throwing vindictives against a their former employer. That employer sent us a demand letter thru their law firm demanding that we terminate the site or be charged with libel as well. The client moved out from us the following day. However, the employer/complainant has now filed several libel law suits against us claiming that we are the owner of the domain and the operator of the site. The site is still up and running though hosted somewhere else, the domain was also transferred away from us. Still, the complainant is alleging we should have enforced some sort of regulations or control over the content when it was still with us.

Apparently, all they wanted is money and this case is just of one of their many business gigs.

A couple readers of Blog Herald suggested to setup a legal fund for Abe just to ease a little bit the financial burden he’s having right now and J. Angelo initiated ways to contribute to this fund thru PayPal or Xoom.

We’ve set up a Xoom link where you can send in funds: www.xoom.com/pay/26999757 . Xoom accepts any amount from $25 to $2,500. For smaller amounts, you can send paypal to theblogherald (at) gmail (dot) com.