RonanOKelly's Blog

With blogging becoming increasingly more popular, one must worry about the legal implications which comes with the complete freedom of speech that the internet provides. This entire issue has become somewhat of a gray area as of late. There are numerous laws to curb any slander or liable that my arise in print journalism and news broadcasting, but this is not so for online journalism, which is still in it’s infancy. These days, almost every blog, forum and other media site has some sort of disclaimer, absolving them from any responsibility over what is written on their site, but they also allow people to sign up anonymously, with an e-mail address being the only means of identification. So, what if a rumor was started about me? What if someone wrote false allegations against me? Where is the legislation to protect my name? Although this kind of thing will be curbed as internet journalism develops, it is still a real danger at the moment.

While researching this, I came across a case of a case where a blogger actually had legal proceedings taken against him as a result of comments made in his blog. From this I found many other bloggers that have become far more cautious when talking about certain issues, which begs the question, can blogging truly flourish if strict legalities are imposed?

The blogger in question at ShoeMoney.com