This week, a British diplomat’s blog had to be pulled after insulting comments were posted by readers. Ian Proud wrote about living in Thailand on the site of The Nation newspaper, but as soon as the blog went live, it filled up with remarks from people who, for example, claimed to have seen the diplomat in Bangkok’s red light district. Tim O’Reilly, meanwhile, has drawn up a code of conduct, which can be amended by bloggers around the world.

Google’s new payment service, Google Checkout, has launched in the UK. While some researchers are sceptical that it’s a “PayPal killer”, the new service has already led to lots of offers and competitions from online payment services since its US launch last June.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is trying to fix a proposed new directive that aims to harmonise European copyright laws, which could turn thousands of EU citizens and businesses into “copycriminals”. The EFF says: “IPRED2’s new crime of ‘aiding, abetting and inciting’ infringement again takes aim at innovators, including open source coders, media-sharing sites like YouTube, and ISPs that refuse to block P2P services.” The European Parliament is voting on it on 24 April, and you can sign a petition here: www.copycrime.eu/petition.