Bloggers who enjoy blogging anonymously at the Google-owned Blogger.com might want to hear about a recent legal kerfuffle in Israel. Specifically, Global Voices Online reports that a local Tel Aviv court had recently ordered Google to hand over the IP of an anonymous blogger who wrote defamatory remarks on his Blogger.com hosted blog (they call the comments slanderous, but really, wouldn’t it be libel instead?)
To no one’s surprise, Google has worked within the boundaries of local laws, and has in fact, given up the IP of the blogger in question. Further details over at TechCrunch have emerged that confirmed my own suspicions in the matter, in that Google did work through a process, but did give the IP over according to their own Terms of Service.
They read, specifically “Google may investigate any violations to “comply with any applicable law, regulation, legal process or governmental request” ”
I think there are some legitimate reasons for wanting to blog anonymously. However, if you’re going to do it and you want to avoid persecution for whatever reason, clearly you may want to avoid doing it with a service such as Google. They will do their best to work through local laws, but have long ago decided to work *within* those local boundaries in almost *all* of its services.
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