But for all of the careful publishing guidelines that are starting to evolve, bloggers still do not feel like they know their audience. For the most part, they have no control over who reads their postings. The study also shows that bloggers usually have some idea of their “core” audience (readers who post comments on the site) without really knowing who the rest of their readers are – in many cases, this latter group makes up the majority of their readers.

A blog survey from MIT on privacy and liability received 486 responses and some interesting findings.
The study population – the respondents were as expected from other surveys.
63% were male, and 67% were from the US. The vast majority were highly educated. Australia, England, Japan and Canada had small representation.

I think as more corporate platforms for blogging appear, the numbers of bloggers who have faced problems will increase.
12% of bloggers reported knowing others who got into legal or professional problems because of their blog.

What I find most interesting is that bloggers don’t feel they know their audience.
Any of us who have blogged for awhile, know our ‘core’ audience, but not the larger group of readers.
Seems to me, that it is the core groups that may well contribute to the legal or professional problems. Of the bloggers I know involved in conflict, two of us were hassled by ‘core’ people, and three were threatened by outside interests.
As bloggers generate revenue by advertising, conflict will increase.

This is an interesting study but it doesn’t answer basic questions.
International internet law is in flux.
Blogs by their very nature are merely self-publishing tools and the vast number of them, along with their short life-span, hardly seem worth ‘going after.’