Okay, have we crossed the line now? Enough so that EFF had to come out with a Legal Guide for Bloggers?
I support the EFF in everything they do and always will. And I like that they are on the ball ahead of the game on this Legal Guide thingy. You’d think such a thing wouldn’t be needed. But you’d be thinking wrong. There have been true cases of folks actually losing their jobs because of their blog contents.
Sometimes we who blog forget that what we say here is literally an open book. Anyone can read it, if they find it. I had a tough decision before buying the website name. If I say up front that I am a lesbian, right there in the dang header, then I needed to consider not putting my name in the URL. But heck, it is too much work. There’s a saying that if you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is to stop digging. I decided to not even pick up the shovel. (might get my hands dirty, ick) So let’s say I work for a company that has a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ kind of lunacy policy. My header just told. What legal grounds do either of us have?
The EFF is a respected authority on online legalities. Laws are based on what has happened before. Legal cases are based on what other legal cases similar to it have done before. Setting a precedent now, before ‘the other side’ can do it for them, EFF has done the right thing.
(thanks for the heads up from IO Error)