this is a discussion that has been going on since the beginning of blogging.

I’d suggest you read Scott Rosenberg’s new book, as well as Rebecca Blood’s “The Weblog Handbook”–one of the first books on blogging that also discuses ethics. This will give you (and some of the readers of this post) an idea of what sorts of ethics many bloggers follow, as well as some of the zeitgeist that has made blogging what it is.