Mike Blackburn

Like Me? Follow Me.

I have just been reading on one of our law client's blogs about a recent ruling from the High Court which seems to suggest that bloggers' no longer have a right to anonymity.

Following a case which resulted in the author of a blog entitled "Nightjack" being outed,  bloggers can now be forced to reveal their identity if it's considered in the public interest to do so. The blog itself has now been removed.

The issue for me is who decides what's in the public interest? I can see that if someone was blogging about setting a bomb to destroy the Houses of Parliament it might be sensible to know who was considering doing it.

However, in this case it seems that the author's identity was revealed so that the public could "make a judgement on the value of comments made (in the blog) about police affairs."

That to me seems that a fairly weak reason and can only serve to limit free debate.

What's even worse for me is that the whole case was brought about by The Times newspaper, who wanted to release the author's details. This seems a incredible tale of double standards; aren't the newspapers the organisations that normally fight very hard to protect their sources?

What moral right does The Times have to decide it's time to out a blogger?

Our client is looking to gauge public opinion on this so please take a look at their post and leave them some comments.

Tags: Blogging, Blogs, Privacy, Social Media, Social Networks

Discussion

Posted by Mindy on Jun 19th, 2009
As someone who blogs (semi) anonymously I find this shocking. When my co-blogger and I started our personal blog we made a conscious decision to use pseudonyms and to keep photographs of ourselves off the site for safety reasons - we mention local places we're going and we often express ourselves quite colourfully and occasionally people express displeasure at this.

Unless some blogger is an actual threat to public safety - intimating they'll harm somebody or may commit a crime - then how can it ever be in anybody's interests to force people into the public eye when they clearly don't want it?

I know there's an argument that "celebrities" lose their right to privacy to some extent by nature of being in the public eye but blogging is about conversation, not celebrity, and anonymous bloggers may just want to talk about things of interest to them with people they wouldn't normally get to encounter, not become the centre of a media storm or famous public figures.
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