my work's new policy on facebook, myspace, and blogs

this weekend, we were informed that the company i work for has a new policy that makes it a terminatable offense to either mention the name of where we work or anything about work or coworkers on facebook, myspace, or blogs. i have always excluded the name of where i work on my blog for personal reasons, so i'm not really that worried about how it will effect my blog. i have several coworkers as friends both on myspace and facebook. i figure i will just have to limit any conversations to private messaging. still, i'm not sure how i feel about this policy. recently, there had been controversy at our particular store about people making disparaging comments about coworkers on myspace. still, this is the same in my mind as idle gossip between coworkers that takes place both inside and outside of work and will always occur when you have people who spend that much time together. the only difference is that now there is a written record. however, making it a terminatable offense for speech that takes place outside of the workplace seems not only harsh but also questionably crossing the line. we are a casual restaurant. we have had people who work as strippers on the side without it being the slightest issue, however mentioning that you work at the restaurant is a problem for their image. i wonder if this is a standard corporate practice now with the prevelance of social networking and blogging or unique to my company.