Who is the owner of blog comments?

Who is responsible for or who retains ownership of comments after they are left on a gardening blog?

The day has long since past when anonymity has allowed a blog owner to hide behind wild and inaccurate allegations and libellous comments and this is proving to be the case with commenter of forums and blogs too.

I am aware of legal investigations into a UK garden blog, where a comment was posted that purported to be from a certain person but this person, who I have spoken to this week, denies all knowledge and is seeking to discover the true commenter's identity.

I have seen a Google cached version of the page and read the comment and I must admit to being shocked.

The comment, indeed the whole post, was not really gardening at all and I completely understand the reasons why this person wishes to discover who left the comment and why.

The comment could seriously damage or influence this persons career and understandably, they wish to take action against the commenter.

The blog owner, as I understand, has removed the comment but is unable or unwilling to provide details of who left the comment. There are ways of tracking IP addresses and some blog platforms, such as Typepad that as I am using, will require an email address as authentication before a comment is registered.

The matter is now in the hands of a media lawyer with the intention of trying to force the blog owner to track down the commentators name.