Navigating the Blogosphere in the Workplace - the Blogosphere Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Blog. - May 2006 - Intellectual Property and Technology Law
| Publication year | 2006 |
| Pages | 55 |
| Citation | Vol. 35 No. 5 Pg. 55 |
2006, May, Pg. 55. Navigating the Blogosphere In the Workplace - The Blogosphere or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Blog. - May 2006 - Intellectual Property and Technology Law
May 2006
Vol. 35, No. 5 [Page 55]
Intellectual Property and Technology Law
Navigating the Blogosphere In the Workplace -- The Blogosphere or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and
Love the Blog.(fn1)
by Elizabeth R. Rita, Eric D. Gunning
This column is prepared by the CBA Intellectual Property and Technology Law and Policy Sections. The column provides information of interest to intellectual property and technology attorneys who advise clients on protecting and exploiting various forms of intellectual property in the marketplace.
Column Editors:
Nathaniel T. Trelease, WebCredenza, Inc., Denver - (720) 937-9930,
About The Authors:
Elizabeth R. Rita is Special Counsel at Kamlet Shepherd & Reichert, LLP, http://www.ksrlaw.com - (303) 825-4200, erita@ksrlaw.com. Her practice focuses on employment law, employment-related investigations, and commercial litigation. Eric D. Gunning is an Associate at Kamlet Shepherd & Reichert, LLP - (303) 825-4200, egunning@ksrlaw.com. His practice focuses on telecommunications, Internet privacy, and emerging technologies.
Blogs, also known as online journals, are growing at an exponential rate. Employers should be wary of this nascent communication tool, because bloggers also can be employees discussing their workplace and divulging confidential company information. This article addresses the pitfalls of employee blogging and recommended actions for employers.
Practitioners who provide employment advice to clients should be knowledgeable about blogging. No, blogging is not a slow-motion exercise for those not fit enough to jog down the block. Blogging is the latest technological craze to sweep into the lives of tech-savvy computer users, both at home - and importantly, for purposes of this article - at work. With ramifications even more far-reaching than the impact of e-mail in the wired workplace, blogging is changing the way employees express themselves, and to whom. As a result, employers have to look at how this reality will affect them as they plunge (like it or not) into the blogosphere.(fn2)
What is a Blog?
Merriam-Webster defines a "blog" as "a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer."(fn3) A blog, also referred to as a "Web log," is a personal website, set up by individuals to share thoughts, to exchange commentary on a particular subject or, in some instances, to chronicle in intimate detail some aspect of a blogger's life. Initially, tech-savvy computer users employed blogging technology to highlight their favorite websites or act as a clearinghouse of information for people with similar interests. In that capacity, blogs acted as a human search engine for websites, often with more specific results than generic search sites like Metacrawler or Yahoo.(fn4)
Recently, with the creation of user-friendly blogging interface programs like Blogger(fn5) and TypePad,(fn6) as well as search engines specifically tailored to searching blogs offered by Google and Technorati,(fn7) blogging is easily accessible to the average (and even below-average) technology-literate computer user. As a result, the number of blogs worldwide has virtually exploded - from 23 recorded blogs in 1999(fn8) to more than 33.2 million blogs as of March 23, 2006,(fn9) with a new blog created every second.(fn10)
Employers and Employee Blogs
People blog about everything - from political issues to television shows, from health struggles to personal problems. That sounds innocent enough. In the workplace, however, blogs can cause problems. When employees blog about their lives (and frustrations) at work, difficult issues for employers arise. Consider the following examples:
a professor who posts comments on a public message board that his student is "incredibly hot"
an employee who complains about a project assignment, without thinking that he may have just revealed details of a new product in the works
an accounting department blogger who gripes about having to work an all-nighter on a big stock deal and who unknowingly just may have "tipped" insider financial information.
Bloggers can post content that disparages the company, defames the company's image, calls into question the company's financial performance, harasses other employees, or leaks the company's proprietary information. Because blogs have the potential to reach millions of viewers instantaneously, the office blog could have an immediate and disastrous impact on a company's stock, its business relationships, and its customer base.
The Perils of Blogging
Employees who blog during work hours cost employers lost time and lost productivity. Some people spend hours blogging on their websites or reading blogs created by others. It is a very hot (and addictive) trend that can and does affect job performance.
Loss of productivity can be easily dealt with by an appropriate policy prohibiting blogging at work. However, even when it is done outside work hours, blogging can create far-ranging problems that are more difficult for employers to handle. The reasons for blogging's perils are simple. First, blogs are surprisingly easy to create. Websites such as blogger.com give users an easy three-stop process for setting up a free blog. Now, even the corner-office executive (or the corner-office law partner) who struggled with learning word processing is technically savvy enough to create a blog.
Second, blogs are easily and instantaneously updateable and there are no external "monitors" as to what is said. A user can post a message to his or her blog or comment on someone else's blog as quickly and easily as sending an e-mail message. There are no external checks and balances to ensure accuracy or appropriateness of content.
Third, blogs are freely accessible to anyone in the world with a computer and Internet connection. Unlike e-mail, which is treacherous enough from an employment practitioner's perspective, the audience for a blog is not limited to a distribution list. The potential audience for any given transmission is millions of readers.
Fourth, blogging can be - and very often is - done anonymously. Bloggers create a user name, which almost always hides their identity. The sense of anonymity can give a blogger free reign to say anything and everything - without the worry of accountability in the "real world." The seeming anonymity and the vastness of the Internet can cause people to say things they would not consider saying in an e-mail.
Finally, diamonds may be "forever," but diamonds last only a little longer than blogs. After it is posted, a blog is out there and available online - forever. Even if a blogger removes the blog from the Internet, it already has been archived or "cached," and remains searchable and available to anyone who looks for it.
Busted For Blogging
Workplace blogging issues are not hypothetical. Microsoft, Google, Delta Air Lines, Wells Fargo, and Boston University are just a few of the major employers who have fired employees for blogging about their jobs.
Dooced
Heather Armstrong was one of the first people who was fired from her job after posting work-related comments on her personal blog. Armstrong maintained a personal Web journal entitled dooce.com (the term "dooced," in blogging parlance, means to be terminated for blogging, and came into use as a reference to Armstrong's Web journal). In her blog, Armstrong talked about her life, complained about work, and provided unflattering descriptions of her co-workers and supervisors. She never mentioned anyone by name and did not identify her employer. Her supervisors discovered her blog after a co-worker sent an anonymous e-mail, essentially "ratting her out." Armstrong's employer subsequently fired her, explaining that the firm...
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