Friday, October 29, 2004

SHOULD WE WATCH OUR BLOGS

An employee of Delta Airlines was suspended due to content she had posted in her Blog,
Queen of the Sky.

This brings to light some other very interesting questions about just what are a blogger's rights and responsibilities when it comes to personal webblogs? Are there any specific laws yet regarding the issues that blogging can raise? For example, what about defamation, liable, and privacy laws when writing about other people in our lives? Additionally, what about intellectual property rights? Frequently, throughout the blogging community there is a lot of sharing of information. Most blogs do appropriately give credit to another's work by referencing and linking to that information, but what if someone does not?

What if a blogger posts a poem or song, or some other type of art, would that be protected under our current laws from someone else coming along and claiming it as his/her own? Obviously, there would be no protections outside of the United States, and vice versa, if someone from another country were to copy something.

I guess I'll be holding off on those draft posts about my ex a little longer.

1 comment:

JohnFen said...

(I am not a lawyer, thank god, but have professionally dealt with many of these issues. Call me an "informed layman")

It looks like she ran into trouble for the use of the uniform in the pics, not the actual content of her blog. This is a pure contractual issue, not a criminal or libel one.

Most of the question you ask in this post are easy to answer. The laws about libel and slander are pretty clear (if its in print or, presumably, weblog, that's a libel area. If you're spreading vicious rumors via word of mouth, that's slander).

The essential test is truthfulness. If you say something heinous about someone, and what you say is true, you are not guilty of libel or slander no matter how awful what you said was. You might have to prove it in court, though. If the person you're talking about is in the "public eye" -- a hollywood star or political figure for example -- then the rules are different (and more lax).

There is no privacy issue, so long as what you're sharing with the world is information you are not prohibited from sharing (through contractual obligation nearly always) and you have not obtained the information illegally (spying, for instance).

IP issues are also typically clear-cut. Unless the author explicitely states differently (for instance, gives you permission), then everything the author write is automatically copyrighted without any further action on the part of the author. You may not reproduce it, in whole or in part (no matter how small), with some exceptions ("fair use"). What constitutes "fair use" is often not completely clear, but if you're worried about it then its worth studying up on.