Libel chill

Libel chill is a classic tactic undertaken by an organization that wishes to silence its enemies. It consists of threatening to file libel actions that would be expensive to defend, not in order to win damages, but to prevent some truth from being revealed. A classic example from the Wikipedia mailing list is James Wales explaining how he intimidates others from filing claims against the Wikimeda foundation:

"in order to file a legal action, he or she would have to reveal his or her true identity, which would then enable us to finally take legal action to permanently ban them from the website, as well as providing an opportunity for me to file a libel claim against him." - Wales [1]

Because of the nature of its work revealing corporate abuses, the Consumerium Governance Organization can expect to very often be the target of such chill.