Sadly, this week marked the 3rd time we've been threatened with legal suit over content in the blog. However, it was the first time that the post in question was created by a guest blogger, rather than someone from SEOmoz.

To help with this situation and to prevent problems in the future, I thought some public guidelines and a full acounting was in order. visit this ; drow last names

This specific incident occured in regards to G-man's post about a Kimberly Williams, the dean of the Boston School of Electrolysis (located in Arizona). As a blackhat, G-man regularly scrapes content from the SERPs at Google and repurposes that data for low quality pages that display advertising. It's up to each of us individually to decide where this action fits on the ethics scale (as it is legal at this time). My personal feeling is that taking advantage of a gap in the technology of the search engines' ranking systems is a gray area, but a fascinating one. G-man is one of my very favorite bloggers at this site and his contributions to date have been terrific, including this latest post.
In this specific case, Ms. Williams noticed G-man's scraped results ranking in front of her site at Google and sent correspondence indicating such. G-man posted this correspondence and the story on the SEOmoz blog - some found it humorous and informative, others thought it was too negative, but in general, I won't let public opinion influence the blog's content. However, the emails posted were technically private and Ms. Williams had the right to be notified before they were posted publicly (not my opinion, but federal law). For this reason, I've had to remove the post.
In the future, it would be very wise for all of our bloggers to familiarize themselves with the rights of bloggers and online journalists available here. In addition, we should all keep in line with the following rules:
• Keep blog posts free from derision and insult, particularly as it relates to a single individual (calling out Amazon for having bad search results doesn't apply)
• Refrain from violating any laws or posting any obviously false information (a bit obvious, but worth mentioning)
• When describing incidents that could incite conflict, be sure to contact the parties involved beforehand. Though their permission is not necessary (for public data), this professional courtesy will always serve us well. For example, I contacted the US Dept of Justice's Cybercrime division upon Matt's posting of this entry to be sure of its legality.
Bloggers are always free to contact me with any questions or concerns they have about a post. You can leave it in "draft" mode and ask for a review, as well.
I hope this helps to prevent future incidents and serves as a positive step forward for the SEOmoz blog. Comments are welcome - even if they're to rail me for squelching free speech
UPDATE: The reason that particular post was pulled is that it is a violation of the law to post an email without first obtaining the permission of the sending party. In that particular case, we were without choice - we could do it ourselves, or let legal proceedings go forward, lose and have it forced upon us (along with the accrued legal expenses). I know it sucks to have information evaporate, but I feel we were without choice on this one.
 
 
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