If you’re a blogger you have better read up on what’s the latest on what rules and laws apply and affect you and your blog.

One very notable development happened when a Canadian model was able to win in the courts and compel an anonymous blogger who has been disparaging her person to reveal his identity. This case sets a precedent about the legal ramifications of slandering and posting negative or hurtful opinions online.

Bloggers, especially anonymous ones, have taken the anonymity the internet gives them as a license to insult other people or to spread false information. The general belief is that they will be free from prosecution because no one knows who they are. The lawsuit has now made anonymous bloggers “vulnerable”. They cannot hide behind the cloak of the internet anymore. Unfortunately, there is also an added complication. In the said lawsuit, the offending blogger has filed a lawsuit against Google — the company who was compelled to reveal the identity of the blogger. The blogger contends that her right to privacy was violated. These actions just means that the blogosphere is going to become a legal battleground where new legal precedents will be established.

Watch any kind of law enforcement show — whether it be a documentary type show or one of those fictional cop shows that are quite entertaining and exciting and you will definitely encounter accounts of snitching.

If you’re interested in the intriguing world of snitching then check out the new blog set up by Alexandra Natapoff.

Natapoff is a leading academic expert in the United States on the subject of using informants in aid of law enforcement. Her blog, snitching.org, deals exclusively with the subject of snitching. This is a must-read blog for especially for those who want to get into law enforcement or just interested in the inner working of law enforcers.

Bloggers are known to discuss and talk about sensitive issues. It’s what makes blogs so fun to read. But can discussions really get too sensitive?

RSA Security thinks so. RSA Security is one of the top security companies in the US and recently it sent a takedown notice to a blogger and the blog’s hosting company as a way of stopping the blogger from discussing the vulnerability that was found on a bank web site, a client of RSA Security and a site that it is helping monitor.

The flimsy accusation is based on the blogger, Scott Jarkoff, committing trademark infringement when discussing the said issue in his blog, Techmiso. This tactic is often used by companies if they want to silence any kind of negative coverage or criticism of these companies.

Fortunately, in a recent development, RSA Security has stopped with its bullying tactics after Techmiso showed that it did not infringe on any kind of copyright.

We’ll see if this is enough to stop the company or if it is just regrouping and will fire a fresh new salvo in the future.

The murder of a couple in Florida became headline news all over the US, but the pronouncements of a blogger has turned the case on its head.

Byrd and Melanie Billings, a couple with 13 adopted special needs children, were murdered in their home after an apparent robbery attempt. This was the official police report. But if you ask Rick Outzen, a local blogger and publisher of an alternative weekly, the real reasons for the deaths are far more sinister.

Outzen said that based on what he has heard, Mr. Billings has a seedy reputation and that according to some of the seven people who were charged with the murder, it was actually a contract killing.

Outzen shared his thoughts on the killings on his blog by posting a 277-word post. This has obviously made him quite a controversial figure and his blog an overnight sensation. Six weeks after the incident, Outzen has proven to be quite a pivotal figure in the investigations. In an interview, the Escambia County sheriff (where the killings took place) said that Outzen’s anonymous sources are largely correct in the information that they give.

Outzen’s case has put blogs in a very different light. Blogs are something that can also be taken seriously and also becoming an integral part of the fourth estate.

Twitter has experienced an explosive boom in its popularity. The microblogging site has become the go-to site for many people who want to give the world a peek into their world, whether it’s exciting or mundane.

That’s why any kind of snags in Twitter’s operations can have a big impact. Just like what happened last Thursday when Twitter was hit by a denial-of-service attack. Twitter didn’t immediately acknowedge the attack. It didn’t offer an explanation for the disruption of service and only placed an innocuous “Site is down” message. Twitter finally revealed the Ddos attack a couple of hours after it placed the “site is down” sign. The new message on the Twitter status blog was, “We are defending against a denial-of-service attack, and will update status again shortly.” Twitter reported that the site was back up at around 11:21 AM EDT but some people still reported not being able to access the site.