If a blogger chooses to defame someone, commit libel against a company or individual, post trade secrets, etc., that blogger is quite possibly breaking the law and is definately in the wrong. Our opinions out here in cyberspace are our opinions and we are entitled to them. However, similar to the old saying “your rights end where your fist ends and my nose begins” applies out here in Cyberspace. We have the right to our opinions as long as our opinions are based on fact, our own views, and our own experiences.

There are those cases where bloggers has posted the “my doctor doesn’t know what he is doing” posts and were sued by the doctor for defamation. Those bloggers should have been saying “I am not happy with the work of my doctor”, for instance, which limits the scope of that opinion to that one instance and individual.

We all as bloggers need to remember that our words out here can and do have repercussions and we need to ensure that what we post on our blogs is based and limited on our experiences alone.

-Mike D

People don’t deserve to live in fear in this day and age..

In the specific case mentioned in the ABC story, it should be immediately clear that it’ll be tossed — you can’t be held liable for comments that you didn’t write.

That being said, you are right that some blogs do and I suspect that we may not be far off from our first criminal copyright infringement case against a blogger, but it will be a warez site or something that is obviously illegal from the outset.

If you don’t blog for the purppose of infringing, I doubt you have much to worry about.

Indeed, most of the things that would cause a blog criminal trouble are indeed patently obvious. In the U.S., you have to do something pretty stupid before the action outweighs your first amendment rights. I think that’s a good thing.

And I agree with your last point, if you do any of those things, you’d be better off not blogging at all…

Of which most are your typical free blogspot blogs. With the rapid speed in which they keep increasing I bet we’ll be finding blogspot targeted as next Google product for harboring copyright infringing material in an attempt to drag out another billion.

As for the first three, well obvious that they would give trouble. Childporn is just *facepalm*, of course there are cases in which artistic pictures or medical pictures are regarded as childporn by the general public, but I don’t know a single modern country in which that ever lead to legal trouble.

State secrets really speaks for itself, and so does threatening people or even harassing them. If that’s going to be your reason to blog to begin with, don’t worry about getting arrested for it but just do the blogosphere a favor and don’t blog.