It would be unfortunate or hilarious, depending on one's personal taste, if scholars in some future time look back at a now-ongoing collision of First Amendment law and New Media practice and call it The Skank Affair.

But that's where we may be headed.

The case so far: An anonymous blogger calls former model Liskula Cohen a "skank," among other things. The former model goes to court, and Google complies with her demand to identify the blogger, who turns out to be a student named Rosemary Port, who then threatens to sue Google for outing her.

Whatever the merits of Port's suit and Cohen's complaint, and whatever the case is dubbed in the future, there are some practical lessons for IT about the power of new media, and the risks, and the as-yet-unsettled body of law and custom that you are expected to understand perfectly by the time of next board meeting, if not sooner.