As a fairly active blogger, I am always always quite impressed by the fact that ones opinion (or blog) can be readily accessible and also deemed as quite important… especially for those of us without any formal writing experience or training 
Free speech at work… got to love it!
But then, every now and then, an article gets posted that makes all bloggers sit up and take notice… and no, this is not an article about Google putting a man on the moon, or Microsoft funding the first manned flight to Jupiter… but rather something a lot more alarming that affects the very thing that many of us would-be “writers” (read bloggers) do on a daily basis… and that is being liable and accountable for what we write, and possibly even being thrown in jail for it! Yup, writing on a blog could land you in prison…
This article on the ABC News website, really made me sit up and start thinking a little more about what I write and especially who I write about.
The bottom line is that in the last 4 years, over 159 civil court actions have been taken against bloggers… with verdicts against bloggers ending up in cumulative penalties totalling $18.5 million!!! Yikes! Talk about clamping down on free speech… believe me, if I knew I was going to have to fork out a few million because of something I said, I would definitely start shutting up. And surely this reaction is the exact opposite reaction of what free speech, and hell, what the blogosphere is all about?!?!
Or maybe I am just overreacting… ? Well, read the article and let me know what you think.
