Silence of the lambs? You have rights as a blogger!

One of the most common fears avid bloggers have is "getting sued" if they provide a negative opinion or commentary about something or someone. Step on too many toes, and you might find yourself in some hot water. And there are plenty of companies and people who help by regularly threatening to sue bloggers, in an effort to keep them quiet.

But what about if you're running a site that caters to dissatisfied customers? Or if you've had a bad experience with a company and you want to blog about it to help warn others? Or if you simply have a blog as part of a business venture, and you wish to write about random topics that might include something negative about a person or company? Should you be forced to keep quiet about these things?

A website dedicated to helping bloggers, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is trying to get the word out to bloggers about their legal rights. They've been running a bloggers' rights campaign to help bloggers learn about their rights, and to help protect the rights of free speech and anonymity on the internet. Many of the articles on the site were written a couple of years ago, but don't let that scare you. Not much has changed in terms of the rights of bloggers over the last couple of years.