A sex trial could dictate your privacy on a blog.

According to a fascinating and potentially unprecedented lawsuit published on CNN.com, it turns out that an upcoming sex lawsuit may have the ability to regulate how you are to treat other’s privacy when mentioning them on your blog.

In a rather bitter breakup between two senatorial aides in the United States Congress, one aide had left rather explicit details about her lover on her blog, which she apparently wanted it to be used a means of keeping contact with her friends and loved ones. I imagine that her “lover” would not have minded of her keeping the blog, but if not for the graphic details she included about the two individuals sexual preferences. You can read the article by clicking here, but let’s just say that it was not until an individual from Wonkette.com, Ana Marie Cox found the blog and LINKED to it that things went horribly awry.

The boyfriend sued his girlfriend over the blog accusing her of violating his privacy when she published his sexual preferences on her blog. According to the CNN.com article: To win, Steinbuch (the boyfriend) will have to prove that the details of their sexual relationship were private and publishing them was highly offensive…Cutler (the girlfriend who “owns” the blog) never intended to make the blog public but, in the information age, data is easily copied and distributed beyond its intended audience.

As always, this could have implications for those bloggers who publish a blog on places such as MySpace, Facebook, and even using Blogger. Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, says that “Anybody who wants to reveal their own private life has a right to do that. It’s a different question when you reveal someone else’s private life,” adding that simply calling something a diary doesn’t make it one. “It’s not sitting in a nice, leather-bound book under a pillow. It’s online where a million people can find it.”

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