If you're not familiar with what went down in the last week with regard to Jason Kottke's blog, then here's a quick refresher.

Kottke had pointed out details he was given about Ken Jennings' eventual demise on the television game show "Jeopardy," and much speculation took place on blogs and in the public eye that he would lose sometime this year. Then, a few days ago, Kottke posted audio and a description of what happened in the "final" show for Jennings. A few days later, he was contacted by Sony and asked to first remove the audio and then the printed description. Various print outlets, including the Washington Post were apparently not told to do the same. (Or are at least not saying/doing so)

Thursday morning, Kottke wrote this post, where he stated that "Things may be a little quieter around here in the short term as I deal with some stuff going on in the real world....I can't say too much about it (soon perhaps), but it sure has had a chilling effect on my enthusiasm for continuing to maintain kottke.org."

The concern here is that a blogger could, even if s/he were *correctly/legally* doing something, be sued and lose the case, purely for financial reasons. Is this right? It's like reverse celebrity justice, in a way. An individual probably cannot defend themselves in the legal arena because of their lack of financial backing, and would give up in most instances. I'm actually starting to wonder if Jason Kottke is being made an example of by Sony at this point. I'm sure their ratings were ridiculous, frankly (I have the web traffic to prove, at least, that the interest was HUGE), and it's not as if the ratings went down one day after he lost (if they did) because someone blurted out the news in advance of it happening. This attracted the casual/non-"Jeopardy" viewer, who tuned in just to see the end of the run. It's created a ton of speculation as people wonder if he lost on purpose, what will happen if he ever got back on the show, whether or not the rules would get changed again, and so on. I haven't seen Sony going after the hundreds of other bloggers who posted on the subject, and am surely not inviting them to come after me. But aren't there bigger fish to fry than Jason Kottke, frankly?