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Employee blogs--the new legal frontier

Elinor Mills Former Staff Writer
Elinor Mills covers Internet security and privacy. She joined CNET News in 2005 after working as a foreign correspondent for Reuters in Portugal and writing for The Industry Standard, the IDG News Service and the Associated Press.
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Elinor Mills

A new survey finds that 5 percent of American workers maintain personal blogs and only 15 percent of their employers have a policy directly addressing blogging activities.

The Employment Law Alliance, a practice of employment lawyers, conducted the telephone survey of 1,000 adults last month. The survey also found that of the workers whose companies have blogging policies, 62 percent say the policy prohibits posting any employer-related information and 60 percent say the policy discourages employees from criticizing or making negative comments about the company.

Meanwhile, most of those surveyed think employers should be allowed to discipline or fire workers who post negative or embarrassing information about the company, and only 23 percent support the right of employees to post criticism or satire about employers, co-workers and others without fear of discipline. With all the new blogs going online daily, looks like the lawyers are going to be busy.