The calculated risk of blogging

Abstract

When the blog search engine Technorati released its annual State of the Blogosphere recently it concluded that the state of the blogosphere is strong. In fact, almost half of the 133 million blogs that have been created since 2002 were created in the past year and a half. But something else was created in direct proportion ? potential liability for libel, copyright infringement, defamation or invasion of privacy. The Media Bloggers Association tracks the rising number of lawsuits against bloggers, and MBA founder Robert Cox says that even frivolous litigation costs money to defend, and legitimate claims have no limit. The mere threat of a lawsuit, he says, is sometimes enough to scare writers out of the blogosphere altogether