Blogging can get you into a legal pickle.

First came the hard-learned lesson that e-mail can be used as evidence in legal proceedings. Now blogs — basically, continuous public Internet journals — are emerging as fair game in civil disputes, criminal cases, and government investigations, where they are used as evidence with growing frequency.

In March, a Plymouth doctor's blog was cited as proof that he continued to harass a female patient who had secured restraining orders against him. In April, a Maine man was sued for allegedly posting defamatory blog entries in which he criticized an advertising agency's work for the state tourism office. And in a high-profile national case, Apple Computer filed a lawsuit seeking the identities of people who allegedly leaked information about new Apple products to several bloggers.

``Blogs raise the same danger that e-mail raised a long time ago, which is that the informal aspects of them make people feel less cautious when they're writing," said Brigitte M. Duffy, a Boston employment lawyer who represents companies that have searched blogs to investigate allegations made by employees. ``But blogs present an even bigger risk because they're accessible to so many more people and they're so much more searchable."

As a result, ``there's an increasing risk that the government, when it's pursuing a criminal case, is likely to use the Internet as a way of collecting information about defendants," she said.

Blogs are also being cited in a growing number of civil cases, most commonly claims alleging libel, defamation, or invasion of privacy.

Well, I have no problem with anything I've said publicly. I'm not a liar and I try really hard to infuse humor to take the sting out of my more inflammatory writings. I'm pretty sure I could withstand the witness stand.

HT: Patterico