[BRIEF NOTE] Bloggers Beware?

[rfmcdonald]

I was interested to come across Graeme Smith's article "Bloggers learn lesson: Don't trash your boss," about the trouble experienced by Penny Cholmondeley when her boss learned about her own blog:

When Penny Cholmondeley found piles of abandoned machinery and rusted cans lying on the snowy tundra outside Iqaluit, she decided they were a "fascinating source of visual material" and posted pictures of the garbage on her personal Internet blog.

Her boss at the Nunavut Tourism agency didn't think the 29-year-old's on-line journal showed off Iqaluit's Arctic charms, however, and fired her from her job as tourism marketing officer.

At the time of her dismissal in July, Ms. Cholmondeley said she never expected her case to get much attention. But her firing has stirred up a buzz among bloggers as the latest example of the collision between business interests, freedom of speech, and the popular on-line diaries known as Web logs, or blogs.

At the heart of the debate is the question Ms. Cholmondeley asked yesterday from her new home in Victoria: "I was a resident of Iqaluit, so am I not allowed to have insight into Iqaluit?"

The answer depends on where a blogger lives and how the writing relates to her job, according to lawyers trying to extrapolate dismissal laws into the new on-line realm.

As a rule, I don't write about my work so I can't see how this would directly impact me. Besides, I've been active on the Internet using my real name since, oh, 1997, so any effort to cover things up would reek of desperation. Still, I wonder.

How do people who blog under their own names deal with this kind of concern?