This is a surprisingly good article on blogs and lawsuits and the future of the "Wild West" Internet. The bottom line seems clear: if on your blog, you make something up about a person with the money to take you to court, you'll lose. I'm fine with that. Blogs should be a place where free speech reigns, but it's also the case that lying liars should be held accountable.

I do very little non-political blogging, and I confess I should probably spend more time around the Internets checking out what actually popular sites are saying and doing. The article points out that there are two new blogs created every second, so I guess I have some excuse for not knowing what else is out there. But I think that just because of the scale of the "personal" web, it'll be a long, long time before the courts catch up. In the meantime, I expect plenty of both good and bad decisions about just how free the intertubes are supposed to be.

Kudos to USA Today for getting it right about blogs. More like this, please.