The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), I just noticed, has a “Legal Guide for Bloggers.” Right along the lines of my last post, it starts out:
Whether you’re a newly minted blogger or a relative old-timer, you’ve been seeing more and more stories pop up every day about bloggers getting in trouble for what they post.
It continues:
To be clear, this guide isn’t a substitute for, nor does it constitute, legal advice. Only an attorney who knows the details of your particular situation can provide the kind of advice you need if you’re being threatened with a lawsuit. The goal here is to give you a basic roadmap to the legal issues you may confront as a blogger, to let you know you have rights, and to encourage you to blog freely with the knowledge that your legitimate speech is protected. [emphasis added]
I haven’t had the chance to review the site in full, but the table of contents covers all of the basic areas of media law. The EFF is providing an excelent service with this site, but one might guess that most bloggers visit it after they or someone they know gets into trouble. The old saying is “ignorance is no excuse for breaking the law,” but when individuals are suddenly made responsible for a long list of potential legal trouble, there is great potential for catching someone off guard or even for making baseless legal threats.
I think it’s reasonable to expect bloggers to fall under a lower standard than a media corporation with a paid legal department.