The other side of the professional blogging coin is looking at the business ramification of making money with your blogging. This session will cover the things to consider and that you may regret if you wait to long to address: copyright protection, tax ramifications, managing personal vs. paid-for blogging, your site policies, and blogging ethics.

Here are my top ten legal issues pertinent to this discussion; what are yours?

1. Communications policies (your own, or someone else's which may apply)

2. Intellectual property (your own and third parties')

3. Indirect liability for third party acts

4. Civility

5. Ethics

6. Privacy

7. E-commerce

8. Data ownership, responsibilities

9. Minors

10. Special considerations for regulated businesses/industries

#1 know and follow bar association guidelines for conduct, as well as the rules of good legal writing. no need to use Blue Book citations, but be accurate in your posts: others will look to them as a source of information and news, if not actual research.

#2 be mindful of what you write. remember that you have an audience.

#3 identify yourself and write in first person. make it clear that you are not necessarily speaking for the bar association as a whole. be sure to disclose any information necessary to keep your statements from being misleading. use the following disclaimer on your blog or wiki with respect to all posts:

#4 respect copyright and fair use. do not plagiarize. give credit where due by citing to the author of a statement or passage.

#5 do not reveal confidential information that could result in liability to yourself, your committee, other bar association members, or the bar association itself.

#6 do not comment on active cases or client matters by name except with the approval of those referred to in the post.

#7 do not use ethnic slurs, insults, or obscenity. Avoid writing about inflammatory topics solely to pique prurient interests.

#8 always try to add to a discussion constructively and ultimately to add value. do not let your ego get in the way. you are here for the good of the bar association after all.

#9 have fun. a blog or wiki can be loads of fun and a terrific way to share the best of your committee with the world.

But for those in the military, as is true of so much they do, their online activities take place in an environment of uncertainty and danger. As the Jacksonville Daily News reports, though use of tools like MySpace is increasingly common, "DoD does not currently have a specific 'blogging' policy." This can leave soldiers like Matt Austin and his family and friends wondering what exactly has led to the curtailing of activities that provide a thin yet powerful lifeline home.

While that bit of information is interesting in its own right, perhaps more interesting is the way I know about it: YLJ went out of its way to thank blawger Sean Sirrine, and ask him once again to help get the word out about the opportunity (which he did). Just another example of blawgs throwing a courtyard bazaar at the ivory tower and fostering a culture of participatory law. I can't think of a more effective way to engage those who might have something intriguing to say.

In doing a quick search, I found court decisions holding both ways when dealing with similar accusations of 'extortion,' ... The legal issue would likely be whether the statements were actual imputations of a crime, or were 'rhetorical hyperbole,' essentially a statement of opinion, not of fact. The former could be considered libelous, while the latter could not.

Also notable is an observation from one of the plaintiffs' lawyers, Thomas More Marrone, about the amplification role the Web adds to the mix: "It's like a guy standing on a street corner talking to his friends except he's writing it down and disseminating it to hundreds, thousands, millions of people."

The moral, I suppose, is that if you're going to use an online medium to discuss others' potentially wrongful acts (and there's no getting around that a blog or podcast is an attractive place for commenting on disturbing conduct), a little attention to phrasing and characterization can wind up going a long way. (See also these discussions of the limited nature of the fair reporting privilege.)