http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/18/technology/18blog.html? When the Blogger Blogs, Can the Employer Intervene? By TOM ZELLER Jr. Published: April 18, 2005 There are about 10 million blogs out there, give or take, including one belonging to Niall Kennedy, an employee at Technorati, a small San Francisco-based company that, yes, tracks blogs. Like many employees at many companies, Mr. Kennedy has opinions, even when he is not working. One evening last month, he channeled one of those off-duty opinions into a satiric bit of artwork - an appropriation of a "loose lips sink ships" World War II-era propaganda poster altered to provide a harsh comment on the growing fears among corporations over the blogging activities of their employees. He then posted it on his personal Web log. But in a paradoxical turn, Mr. Kennedy's employer, having received some complaints about the artwork, stepped in and asked him to reconsider the posting and Mr. Kennedy complied, taking the image down. "The past day has been a huge wake-up call," Mr. Kennedy wrote soon afterward. "I see now that the voice of a company is not limited to top-level executives, vice presidents and public relations officers." As the practice of blogging has spread, employees like Mr. Kennedy are coming to the realization that corporations, which spend millions of dollars protecting their brands, are under no particular obligation to tolerate threats, real or perceived, from the activities of people who become identified with those brands, even if it is on their personal Web sites. They are also learning that the law offers no special protections for blogging - certainly no more than for any other off-duty activity. As Annalee Newitz, a policy analyst with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights advocacy group in Washington, put it, "What we found is there really is quite a bit of diversity in how employers are responding to blogging." A rising tide of employees have recently been reprimanded or let go for running afoul of their employers' taste or temperament on personal blogs, including a flight attendant for Delta Air Lines who learned the hard way that the carrier frowns on cheeky photos while in uniform and a Google employee who mused on the company's financial condition and was fired. Some interpreted these actions as meaning that even in their living rooms, even in their private basement computer caves, employees are required to be at least a little bit worried about losing their jobs if they write or post the wrong thing on their personal Web logs. "I would have expected that some of the louder, more strident voices on the Internet would have risen up in a frenzy over this," said Stowe Boyd, the president of Corante, a daily online news digest on the technology sector. "But that didn't happen." In Mr. Boyd's opinion, everything about what Mr. Kennedy did was protected speech. The use of trademarks was fair use in a satirical work, Mr. Boyd said, and it seemed unlikely that the company would be somehow liable for the off-duty actions of an employee, as Technorati executives argued. It was, in Mr. Boyd's eyes, an indication that corporate interests were eclipsing individual rights. "I don't know what else to say," he declared. "I'm astonished." But Ms. Newitz and others have cautioned that employees must be careful not to confuse freedom of speech with a freedom from consequences that might follow from what they say. Indeed, the vast majority of states are considered "at will" states - meaning that employees can quit, and employers can fire them, at will - without evident reason (barring statutory exceptions like race or religion, where discrimination would have to be proved). "There really are no laws that protect you," Ms. Newitz said. Martin H. Malin, a professor of law and director of the Institute for Law and the Workplace at the Chicago-Kent College of Law, said there were only a few exceptions. "It depends on what the blog is," he said, "what the content is, and whether there's any contractual protection for the employee." Those who work for the United States Postal Service, for instance, or a local sanitation department may have some special blogging privileges. That is because, depending on the circumstances, the online speech of public employees can be considered "of public concern," and enjoys a measure of protection, Professor Malin explained. - article continues; see website