We have written in the past about the effect on employment that blogging may have. Now we see a school district taking action to place a bright student in an alternative education program as a result of a parody site that he did on myspace.com.

From the limited facts presented, it appears to be a serious case of overreaction by the school. People sometimes need to vent. On the other hand, at what point are you disrespecting authority? Interesting questions.

Also in recent news, a Judge who had ordered several teenages not to drink posted pictures of themselves and friends getting wasted and made fun of the Judge in the process. He happened onto the blog sites, and given the picture evidence, he put them in jail for disregarding his orders.

One of the effects of this type of conduct is that kids are going from the open forum xanga.com blogs to the more restricted closed forums like facebook.com.

Let’s start today with a list of people who face consequences for blogging. Drop a comment below if you know of a case where someone lost a job, got sanctioned by an employer or school system, or got put in jail as a result of exercising speech on the internet. At a later time we can try to make sense of it. If you see the page, how about a screenshot of it? Say you have it and I’ll be in touch.

Update 1: Students are disciplined from extra-curricular activities as a result of pictures of a drinking party when those pictures are placed on myspace.

Update 2: Here is another one. Appears to be a growing fad. In this case two students are apparently jailed after posting threats of violence in their school.

This article was posted on Tuesday, January 31st, 2006 at 2:01 pm