A PhD candidate from MIT is doing a survey on blogs with some extemely interesting questions.

Web logs, also known as blogs have gone from being a once marginal activity of Internet enthusiasts to becoming squarely mainstream. With the gradual upgrade to a more “serious” publishing venue, blog authors are finding themselves increasingly liable for their chattiness. My paper will explore the tension between the “freedom” experienced by authors in their blog sites and the legal predicaments they are bound to experience as online publishers in the near future.

By conducting an online survey with bloggers, I hope to determine the expectations of privacy and accountability that authors have when they blog. The only way to find out whether authors’ expectations are in line with the current protection allotted to them by the law is to get feedback from bloggers on how they think about issues of privacy and liability as they publish online.

I think some of the questions are exclusive to US bloggers, but even if you don’t take the survey it’s worth looking it over.
Having had one of my readers threatened and having had my blog annihilated by a US server owner because he wanted to, I suspect some of these questions are worth considering for all of us.
I’ve seen god-bloggers from Australia and the US also ‘threatened’ under US laws, and it is just a matter of time before another blogger in this sub-division faces another angry Christian or company prepared to use legal or arbitrary methods, let alone the rest of the online world.