Know that blog you’ve been keeping detailing your sex life, with all the torrid details and specifics that nobody asked for in the first place? Turns out, it’ll not only make your mother cry, but it could get you sued.

Or will it? Individual state Supreme Courts (including California) have passed rulings upholding the rights of bloggers and message board posters to say whatever they want, but a new case could set the legal precedent for what bloggers can—and can’t—say about other people’s lives.

In 2004, Jessica Cutler was working as an aide in now-displaced Ohio Senator Mike DeWine’s office—at the same time, Cutler was writing a blog, Washingtonienne, about her sex life, which necessarily divulged details about her partners’ sex lives as well. One of them, DeWine attorney Robert Steinbuch, who apparently had a thing for spanking, went ape-poop, suing Cutler for $20 million for invasion of privacy. (He also lost his job and has since landed in Arkansas in an attempt to resuscitate his career.)

From the Guardian:

The case dating from the 2004 blog is expected to go to trial soon. In establishing whether people who keep online journals are obliged to respect the privacy of those they interact with offline, the case could have a profound effect on the content of social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook.

“Anybody who wants to reveal their own private life has a right to do that,” said Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Centre. “It’s a different question when you reveal someone else’s private life.”

But in filing the suit, Steinbuch will be broadcasting his private life to a far wider audience than Cutler’s relatively microscopic blog audience. In April, the judge in the case, Paul Friedman, told attorneys, “I don’t know why we’re here in federal court to begin with. I don’t know why this guy thought it was smart to file a lawsuit and lay out all of his private, intimate details.”

Ultimately, the case will decide if bloggers have a legal responsibility to protect the private lives of people they interact with. But it brings up larger questions as well—in the age of instant electronic publishing, do any of us have the right to expect that our lives will stay off the internet? Or is that just another byproduct of the modern world, in which we’re all becoming increasingly interconnected?

Cutler’s new blog is here, and her Washingtonienne archives have been saved by Wonkette here. They’re not as salacious as I was led to believe, but Cutler sounds like a real peach.

Via Huffington Post.