how public a forum is a blog?

Another datum point. I heard yesterday from the guy who hosts Joe's blog. (Full disclosure: I know him, but as he's only tangentially involved I'm not going to drag him into this.) Until this affair blew up, Joe's journal was getting roughly 20 distinct visitors per day (presumably the same small circle of friends). Which his dismissal this shot up to 400-500 a day. By Tuesday, when the shit had hit the fan and the newspapers were beginning to notice, he was up to 5000 visitors/day.

I'd therefore suggest that prior to his sacking, his blog was a non-problem for Waterstones (in terms of adverse publicity), but the way they've handled it has boosted his readership by two or more orders of magnitude. That's not insignificant, and it holds lessons for anyone who wants to play whack-a-mole with publicly expressed opinion on the internet.

I agree that the defamation laws in the UK are dangerous and chilling. I believe Sottish law is rather different (no libel or slander, but a separate civil offense of defamation, which is defined rather more narrowly), but as the English courts lately ruled that something on the internet is automatically subject to the English libel law if it is possible that someone in England might be able to read it that's not much help.

The only workable defensive response to Big Brother Google is to not say anything, in any electronic medium (even private files on your hard disk!) that you would mind having dragged up in front of a judge by a hostile barrister. But it's already too late for most of us to do that -- and, I submit, it is not desirable.