A Blogger’s Survival Manual (Updated)

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PCIJ is once again on the gunsight of Mike Defensor’s stoogie Jonathan Tiongco, who is hell bent on shutting down PCIJ. PCIJ was slapped a TRO before, courtesy of Tiongco’s wife, and now, Tiongco may be at it again. (Side note: The linked blog entry was numbered 464.) The page that was TROd discussed the life of Tiongco and his rise to infamy.

PCIJ has learned that there was an attempt by Tiongco to file a search warrant against – you guessed it right – PCIJ.

Now, there is jurisprudence about this; what this means is that if it was done before, it can be done again. And with the incessant efforts by Gloria Arroyo and her generals to stifle dissent, bloggers will be next in line after the mainstream news organizations. Bloggers are not yet targets because they do not command yet the attention that news organization gets; the Internet penetration, much less availability of computers at home, is still low. If a computer and an Internet connection is as available as a TV set, Arroyo would have to address the “problem”. I believe Web sites that fits her “destabilizer” label will be targeted, but not yet soon. I hope I am wrong; the Internet is such a free place, and I hope it will remain so.

Anyway, it is better to be prepared. How can we survive? Too pessimistic. How can we mitigate such actions? Here are some suggestions:

  • Get another blog provider. Repost your entries there. But do not link to it. The key is to have it unknown to the casual reader. I know this will mean redundancy and extra effort. WordPress users can use the LiveJournal Cross Poster plugin, if you have a LiveJournal account.
  • Hire a lawyer, or at least know the laws that has bearing on blogging. Make sure your blog entries are not contrary to the law, if you feel like being lawful. After all, you exercise your freedom, you are responsible for that.
  • Try not to disclose your true identity. After all, you cannot be sued if they don’t know who you are. (John Doe? Jane Doe? Duh!)
  • Ask someone/others to repost your problematic/questioned blog entry. (Make sure you give them a copy.)

That’s all I can think of at the moment.

UPDATE: YugaTech had a blog post that addressed this issue: Is your blog safe from the DOJ?