But having taken on this Herculean task, I assume that they will seek an appropriate reward and just such an reward will most likely come from some large commercial organisation whose bosses have decided that it is not all about profits but also about being nice to people and doing lots of warm, fuzzy things for the environment.

I am sure that such organisations do exist and, without wishing to cast any doubt upon their sincerity, I think it is reasonable to assume that, if they go to the trouble of acting on all these injunctions for the perceived common good, then they will want people to know about it. Especially their customers. In other words, there is no getting away from the 'public relations' element here.

And this is where the best laid plans of mice and men (and lawyers) 'gang aft a gley' because regardless of all the best intentions both said organisation and their august legal-eagles in the shape of Messrs Holden Redlich, all their good works are still conducted behind the closed doors of corporation-land. A company may well be putting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights into effect but what does actually mean in practice? How does it work? Who benefits and why?

You see, as far as the general public is concerned, all these grand-sounding organisations and declarations are still shrouded in a fog of mystery and gobbledegook and their implementation will, at best, only ever be sporadically and flickeringly illuminated by the occasional and instantly forgettable press release.

The organisation would be far better served not just by implementing these ideas but by talking about them and, more importantly, talking to their customers about them. They could talk about the International Labour Organisation and why it matters. Or the Kyoto Protocol and what is being done in response. The best PR is the truth.

None of which is to say that I am attempting to steal the bread from my fellow lawyers mouths. Heaven forfend! No, the lawyers have an important role to play in this process too. Let's face it all lawyers have something of an image problem but the best way to mitigate against that (as well as summon the fancy of new potential clients) is to talk about what they do and why they do it and why their clients should be doing it as well.

The arduous task of implementing big ideas is something of a waste if no-one knows about it. So let them know. Get blogging.

Mr. Meckler reminds us that the US judicial system is famously (or infamously, depending on one's point of view) open on matters of publicity compared to its British counterpart.

Hence, UK bloggers should steer clear of following his example. Under UK law, reporting restrictions on court proceeds apply as a matter of course. Although the bar is set lower in civil proceedings than in criminal matters, once a case is underway the issue is sub judice and publishing details could land the blogger with a charge of Contempt of Court. In serious cases, this can lead to a custodial sentence.

The only safe way to publish details about court cases is to wait until after 'disposal' (i.e. the verdict).

And there is also a second important point to remember here, again as kindly illustrated by Mr. Meckler:

... I learned that the eMarketer folks have been using my blog entries in the court.

Remember that everything you blog can be taken down and used in evidence.

It is certainly what this chap must have thought:

It seems that one of the most dangerous things you can do in a relationship is make a video of yourself and your loved one getting jiggy with it. It will almost certainly come back to haunt you; a fact which one Clara Whitehouse has learned the hard way...

Her ex, Paul Clarke, clearly enraged that she had ditched him for another, got his revenge by posting just such a video online, for all the world to see.

Cruel or what?

He followed this up by making sure as many people as possible were aware of the site - by handling out flyers advertising it at Clara's 21st birthday party. He also had them sent to her workplace and delivered to her neighbours.

Ouch! That has got to hurt.

Devilishly devious, yes, but also rather self-defeating as Paul ended up in the dock and has admitted harassment.

And that has got to hurt even more.

Now, for the quibblesome amongst you, the tool of payback here was a website not a blog but the same principles will apply and, while I am not aware of any such cases involving blogs, it is a pretty well-established precedent that someone can 'harrass' someone else by means of a 'hate' campaign involving websites, chatrooms and e-mails. I see no reason why blogs could (or will) be excepted.

And far be it from me to put ideas into the prosecutors head but it is my view that the enraged Mr. Clark also infringed the Data Protection legislation by publishing the material without permission (not that he was likely to get permission even if he was minded to request it). Post 'Lindqvist', it is clear that publishing personal information (let alone video material showing the subject in flagrante delicto) on-line without prior consent is an offence under the Data Protection Act.

Revenge may be sweet but when it bites you on the backside then it is bitter indeed. The upside of blogging is that your voice is being heard but the complementary downside is that you take the fall when you get it wrong.

Blogs are a powerful weapon. Just make sure that you do not shoot yourself in the foot.

All original work (including on-line articles) is protected by the law of copyright which means that only the owner can reproduce that work. Thus, a would-be fisker would find themselves in the position of wanting to criticise words they cannot reproduce. Very difficult.

Fortunately, a fisker can rely on the doctrine of 'fair use' which provides certain circumstances where copyright protected work can be reproduced without permission. One of these circumstances is if the reproduction is for the purposes of 'criticism or review' (and fisking is a compact combination of both disciplines).

The law in the UK is governed by the Section 30 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 which says:

Fair dealing with a work for the purpose of criticism or review, of that or another work or of a performance of a work, does not infringe any copyright in the work provided that it is accompanied by a sufficient acknowledgement.

The law is amended by the Copyright Regulation 2003 which adds the requirement for the copyright work to have been made available to the public.

So, if you want to fisk somebody else's article, go right ahead. Just make sure:

1. That the article has been made available to the public (and being put on-line counts as that)
2. You acknowledge the copyright owner.

It may also do not to reproduce too much of any copyright article or piece but only just enough to enable you to get your crucial points across.

So, I say unto ye, go forth and fisk.

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First things first. What you cannot do is deny any responsibility. As much as you may be loath to have to 'police' your comments section, if you own the blog then you are responsible for anything and everything that is published on the blog (and, paradoxically, the more 'moderated' the comments, the higher this bar of responsbility rises).

So, you do have to respond to Commenter A's letter. But, that said, the first thing you should do is to check whether Commenter A is a person who can be identified from the comments he has left. If he has chosen to post comments anonymously by, say, using a pseudonym, then he is going to find it very hard to claim that he has suffered damage to his reputation for the simple reason that the defamatory remark cannot be linked to the real person.

However, if Commenter A is a person who can be identified from his posting then the next question to consider is whether he has grounds to complain about the remarks left by Commenter B. Are those remarks libellous?

In both cases, I think the answer is 'yes'. However, that is my view on balance and only just on balance.

Most of the time, rude remarks can be dismissed as mere vulgar language. Occasionally, a rude remark may qualify as a 'fair comment' . But the test to be applied is the degree of maliciousness in the remark. In this case, I think the term 'weapon-grade cretin' falls just outside the acceptable realms of fair comment or mere insulting language.

So Commenter A has a valid complaint. What to do? Well, assuming that Commenter B is not your employee then there is no way that you can force Commenter B to retract his remark or make an apology. But what you can (and should) do is to delete the offending comment and then write to Commenter A informing him that the comment has been deleting and apologising for any hurt caused.

In the vast majority of cases, this will smooth ruffled feathers and settle the matter. However, depending on how hurt (or how determined) Commenter A turns out to be, he may decide to press the matter further. If so, you may have to publish a full apology yourself and, possibly, even offer some token compensation (or the lawyers' fees if Commenter A went as far as to instruct one).

Though, for the most part, simple common sense measures will do the trick. But the best way to solve problems like this is to head them off at the pass, so to speak.

This is why everyone who has a comments facility on their blog should also have a 'comments policy' that warns all readers that comments may be edited or deleted for reason of law or even good taste. And remember to keep a regular eye on your comments section. If you think a particular comment is libellous or gratuitously insulting then you should seriously consider deleting it on the spot.

But if you also want to encourage an atmosphere of open argument and free speech then you need to strike a balance. The best way to do that is to decide beforehand where you boundaries are going to be and then enforce them.

Mrs Lindqvist, a member of her local church, established the personal website for the purpose of assisting other church-goers in their confirmation preparations. Included on the website were the names, addresses and telephone numbers of some 18 or so of her fellow parishoners and some light-hearted newsletter-type gossip about their jobs (or lack thereof) and current ailments.

So what's the big deal? You might well ask. What could possibly be more innocuous (or dull for that matter)? Is this not precisely the kind of community-minded operation that the internet was intended to facilitate? So does anybody want to make a federal case out of it?

Um, yes. Apparently they do. And they did. Poor old Mrs Lindqvist was hauled before a District Court in Sweden where she was found guilty of:

processing personal data by automatic means without notifying the Datainspektion" (the Swedish supervisory authority for the protection of electronically transmitted data) and "transferring data to third countries without authorisation and for processing sensitive personal data.

For all the common sense in the world, this seems like a case of wildly over-zealous, pettyfogging, jobsworthiness on the part of the Swedish state but, the grisly fact is that the posting of personal information, including images and video clips, of others without their consent is an infringement of the 1995 European Data Protection Directive (which has been enacted in the UK under the Data Protection Act 1998).

An understandably non-plussed Mrs Lindqvist appealed the decision to the European Court of Justice but lost. For those of you with sufficient interest (not to say gumption) the transcipt of the entire Appeal judgment can be found here. However, for those of you satisfied with merely the 'money-quote', this is it:

"that the act of referring, on an internet page, to various persons and identifying them by name or by other means, for instance by giving their telephone number or information regarding their working conditions and hobbies, constitutes the processing of personal data wholly or partly by automatic means within the meaning of [the Directive]."

And that was that. And now that is this, which is to say, blogging. If you have a blog and want to post information about friends or work colleagues, the rule is, ask their permission first. As I type this, lawyers all over Europe are scuttling over their client's wesbites looking for any personal information displayed thereon. If they find any, then they better have that person's permission or they better remove said information PDQ.

Having said all of that, there is something so wondrously strange about this case as to almost be bizarre. Of all the wild, weird, dark, vile and dangerous places on the internet, the apparatus of state enforcement is brought to bear on this genteel Swedish church-going lady for creating what was to her (and I daresay 99.9% of the rest of humanity) a perfectly cutesy and innocent little website.

It is, and will always be, a rum old world.

The case was settled in 1999 when Microsoft agreed to link to the Ticketmaster.com homepage and, as a result, no substantive legal ruling was made on the issue. Had there been one it would almost certainly have had significance in the UK because legal precedents (especially those involving technology and the internet) have a knack of drifting over jurisdictional boundaries like radioactive fallout.

But, for now at least, we can link away. However, commercial bloggers would be well advised not to do so with gay abandon. There is no rule against 'deep linking' yet but it is feckless to imagine that the beneficiaries of 'eyeball-driven' revenue are not going to be motivated to protect their cash-cows.

I wholly expect that this issue is going to come before the Courts again either in Britain or the USA at some time in the future and commercial bloggers might be advised to just bear this in mind. Right now, I would suggest that best practice is to continue linking to embedded pages but try to include a link to the relevant homepage in the same posting.