Blogging on the right side of the law

There are many advantages to setting up and running your own blog, from the satisfaction of sharing your thoughts with the blogosphere to driving relevant, convertible traffic back to your website as part of a rounded content marketing strategy. With modern blogging platforms, joining the many millions of bloggers around the world is now relatively easy and often free. But blogging carries an element of risk and you need to be aware of what you're getting into before you hit the publish button...

When it comes to blogging, the risks are numerous, but this article is not concerned with writers' block or wrist cramp. A much bigger risk for budding bloggers is falling foul of the law. Depending on your jurisdiction, the laws governing what you can write, even on a personal blog, can be very strict and if you don't know what you're doing you could type your way into a lot of trouble.

Libel laws vary from country to country, but the concept is pretty consistent. If you write something on your blog that could damage someone's reputation then you could be sued for libel. The burden of proof will likely rest with you and the cost of defending yourself, nevermind settling, will be enough to make your bank manager disown you. For big newspaper and magazine groups, threats of libel suits go with the territory. Many will be batted away, while others will be settled out of court (often from a dedicated fund). It's only a very small number that make it in front of a judge, but the damages awarded in such cases can be crippling, even for established publishers.

It is of course much less likely that a blogger will be threatened with a libel suit. For starters, the vast majority of blogs get read by significantly fewer people than top newspapers or magazines. There's also little point suing someone with no money – and "big mean company sues bedroom blogger" can be bad PR.

But that doesn't mean it never happens. Some blogs have a huge following and can drive stories through to the mainstream media. Post something untrue and damaging and your blog's popularity could work against you. Even if you think you're too small or poor to be worth suing, that doesn't mean you can be sure of flying under the radar. You might make a good example to deter further defamatory posts. You also might be more inclined to immediately take your post down or publish a retraction if you get threatened with a lawsuit.

For some recent examples of libel claims against bloggers, just run a quick Google search. You'll see that some of these cases also raise the issue of libel tourism - the practice of suing in the most favourable jurisdiction - which some governments have been trying to clamp down on.

The rules governing copyright are perhaps a little clearer than libel laws and anyone who has been through a decent education system should know the difference between an A-grade, original essay and something lifted from a text book. Copying chunks of other people's work and failing to acknowledge exclusive material, under most jurisdictions, is copyright infringement and can get you sued.

Besides wanting to protect intellectual property, there are two reasons specific to the internet for publishers to consider legal action when someone lifts their copy. The first is the value Google and other search engines place on original content. If you write an article that is then reproduced on another website, Google might not know which one is the original and boot both pages out of its search results. For companies that rely on search traffic for a large share of their revenue, such an incident would be hugely damaging. The second is the threat that free content on the internet poses to the survival of traditional media outlets. A number of newspapers and magazines have opted to introduce paywalls - putting their content behind a login and charging readers to access it - which makes protecting exclusivity a top priority. Why would anyone pay even a small fee to read an article that is available for free elsewhere?

What this means for you as a blogger is that if you copy portions of articles from other sites and post them on your blog, you could find yourself in a big legal mess. Websites trying to defend their Google ranking and newspaper groups protecting their paid content, will take a dim view of copyright infringement, whether you blog from the bedroom or the boardroom.