As usual, this post is influenced by the madness of the papers that had been flagging down blogs that have been trying to promote racist and inciting of hate towards religions. The media sure make it looks like there are no rules on blogging at all whereas there are plenty. I do not support racist or any manner/form of hate towards anyone or anything or any organisation whatsoever. Therefore I’m creating an all out awareness to bloggers who simply sits on their bum and think that it’s a free world out there on the internet with freedom of speech.

Firstly and most importantly, there are no such thing as freedom of speech on the internet. Don’t think that whatever you type/express/rant about cannot be traced down by the authorities should you ever piqued their attention. No parties would ever want to mess with the men in blue especially when they start coming out with warrants and court orders. Take note that every web hosters, blog hosters, domain owners and anything that corresponds to them would do everything in their power to comply with the men in blue.

Next, let’s take a deeper look at some Terms of Service or Blogging Etiquette of some well known web publishing blogging services. In Blogger.com, it is clearly stated that they do not tolerate Pornography & Obscenity, Hateful Content, Violent Content, Copyright, Private & Confidential Information, Impersonation, Unlawful Use of Service, Spam-Malicious-Codes & Virus. Taking a copy and paste action, the meanings of the above are as follows:-

”

PORNOGRAPHY AND OBSCENITY:

• Pornography and Obscenity: Image and video content that contains nudity, sexually graphic material, or material that is otherwise deemed explicit by Google should be made private. Otherwise, we may put such content behind an interstitial.
• Pedophilia, Incest and Bestiality: Users may not publish written, image or video content that promotes pedophilia, incest and bestiality.
• Commercial Pornography: We do not allow content that exists for the primary purpose of monetizing porn content or driving traffic to a monetized pornography site.
• Child Pornography: Google has a zero-tolerance policy against child pornography, and we will terminate and report to the appropriate authorities any user who publishes or distributes child pornography.

HATEFUL CONTENT: Users may not publish material that promotes hate toward groups based on race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, gender, age, veteran status, and sexual orientation/gender identity.

VIOLENT CONTENT: Users may not publish direct threats of violence against any person or group of people.

COPYRIGHT: It is our policy to respond to clear notices of alleged copyright infringement. More information about our copyright procedures can be found here.

PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION: We do not allow the unauthorized publishing of people’s private and confidential information, such as credit card numbers, Social Security Numbers, and driver’s and other license numbers.

IMPERSONATION: We do not allow impersonation of others through our services in a manner that is intended to or does mislead or confuse others.

UNLAWFUL USE OF SERVICES: Our products and services should not be used for unlawful purposes or for promotion of dangerous and illegal activities. Your account may be terminated and you may be reported to the appropriate authorities.

SPAM, MALICIOUS CODES AND VIRUSES: We do not allow spamming or transmitting malware and viruses.

”

Blogger.com is not the only one that has the Blogging Etiquette in their Terms of Service. In fact Wordpress.com, Livejournal.com and many others have that rules in their service. They will not hesitate to terminate your service should the blogger insist of doing otherwise.

Furthermore, if your content should attract the wrong attention of any government authorities from whichever countries, then you’d find yourself being hauled up in not the most friendly way. Even though as a blogger, we have the so called ‘power’ to express our discontentment with whatsoever party, we do not have the ‘power’ at all. We are still governed by rules and regulations. So don’t start blabbering your anger away should any parties decide that they had enough of your nonsense and pull you out into court.

So bloggers, do your part in being wiser, read the Terms of Service before you start your writings and end up on the wrong side of the law.