If you’re blogging, you’re a publisher.  Yesterday I posted about how Cyber Liability Insurance may help firms mitigate the risks of new online business activities. But what about your personal blog?

Liability for Your Personal Blog? Oh, yes.
Andrew Hamilton published a website, Forgotten Ohio, in which he retold a local ghost story about a “haunted house” in his community. Though he didn’t encourage trespassing, or portray the property owners in a false light, a local court held the website liable for $125,000 in damages. See coverage of this horrifying ruling on Overlawyered.

Are There Liability Risks in Personal Blogging?
Even if your blog is non-commericial you can still be charged with defamation, copyright or trademark infringement, libel, slander (if you publish audio), and other creative charges. Once could also be charged for invasion of privacy as part of your news-gathering. Though the First Amendment protects what you say, it’s protection isn’t as strong about how you gather information to express.

And there is always the potential of infringement claims by trademark and copyright holders. And even if you’re in the right,  litigation can be expensive to defend, and the costs skyrocket the longer the litigation continues.

Besides, the law around many digital issues is still unfolding, and many jurisdictions vary in their knowledge of these laws. You may think you’re in the right but still find a decision against you. These unexpected rulings are the bread and butter of our online law blog.

You May Already Have Liability Insurance for Personal Blogging
If you have Homeowner’s or Renter’s Insurance, you have general liability insurance that could be applicable in some of these situations.  Most policies cover damages and fees incurred in suits against the insured for “bodily injury.” While that sounds more physical, this often includes  personal injury arising out of defamation or invasion of privacy.

Obviously, you are only covered if your insurance contract contains such language.

You should note, however, that your policy may not include coverage for copyright or other intellectual property claims, which do not typically fall within the standard definition of “bodily injury” or “personal injury” covered by most policies. Homeowner’s and renter’s insurance policies typically cover damages  and legal defense costs, but not punitive damages.

Extend Your Coverage With Media Insurance
Harvard’s Citizen Media Law Project provides resources to explain if you would benefit from Media Insurance.

If your online activities are part of an existing business, you may also be able to add coverage to your business insurance policy through an add-on rider. Keep in mind that the fact that you may not make money doesn’t insulate you from responsibility for what you publish online. And a few minutes thinking about how to avoid liability and protect yourself from charges may save you stress and thousands of dollars in expenses later.

In Monrovia, Liberia, there’s a guy taking the matter of a lopsided, state-run media and reshaping it into a free-of-charge, independent news-aggregator—all accomplished with a whiteboard and couple of markers. (No Internet required!)

Each morning, at 10:45 a.m., Alfred Sirleaf heads to his bulletin board to post the day’s news, culling together a slate of stories his countrymen might otherwise never see.  A “self-taught newshound,” he reads half-a-dozen newspapers, then summarizes the most important topics and prints them out by hand in front of his plywood shed. He has recruited a set of stringers to send him scoops via text messages, and puts up a painted “Breaking News” sign to signal a big story. He’s even designed a system of symbols to convey the news to those who can’t read, or who are driving by.

Grateful readers line up in droves, on foot and in cars, to read these updates, in what has been described as the country’s — and probably the world’s — only analog blog.  Simplicity is the good manners of our age.

Discussions of regulating digital marketing were just below the surface at New York Ad:Tech.  My last post gave an overview of efforts to regulate digital marketing. Now, here’s an interview at Ad:Tech by reporter David Spark with Ted Murphy, CEO of Izea, the company that makes the paid blogging service Social Spark. Ted’s been in touch with the FTC, and that made it into the interview.

How Can Digital Content Pay for Itself?
The quest for “monetization” is still a major theme in digital publishing. Can long-tail marketing pay for itself? What about social media? How can the need for journalism get attached to new working business models?

Answer: Pay for Play, the “Oldest Profession” in Marketing
Pay for play is absolutely present in many non-digital business models. Gartner Consulting is being sued for this right now, for $1.4 billion.  IT consulting used to be rife with “sponsored authorship.” They wanted to avoid this kind of case.

I was part of this. First you’d pay Aberdeen to write nice but vague things about your firm, then after a few quarters of paying Garner they’d become aware of you, and you’d get mentions. There were only winks and nudges, perceived or real, exchanged with the subscriptions. Hell, the analysts that covered our space probably thought we all just had nervous ticks.

But firms, like the one in the video below, are explicit about “you pay, we get people to publish stuff for you.” Sounds a bit like the PR trade, but with less smoke and fewer mirrors, and more certainty of results.

The FTC would require that such relationships be made transparent to readers. And though this sounds reasonable, consider why political figures endorse and speak for one another. PR and lobbying are pretty similar: one pursues political favor, the other journalistic favor. Having a truth squad to enforce ethical behavior could be a medicine more deadly than the disease it seeks to solve. Regulation or not, your online BS detector is still the best defense.

We’ve seen governments monitor private citizens through video surveillance and increased access to electronic records. Here’s a proposal for citizens, and their media, to use some of these same tools to follow the work of their representatives in government.

Massachusetts’ Open Meeting Law and Public Record Law may be expanded by S1458 to provided better access for independent media (bloggers) to state buildings and records.

The bill proposes special standing to citizens and members of the press seeking to take video of proceedings. They would have preference in attending meetings and a prepared location whenever possible.

And finally, it puts the state in the role of taking and distributing its own video of proceedings.

The General Court shall ensure that video recording of each public hearing of committees and special commissions. Said recording shall be archived on the website of the General Court in a form easily accessible to the general public as soon as reasonably feasible after the recording is made, and shall remain available on the website for at least 24 months, after which it shall be preserved in the state library.

The state has lots of cameras fixed on citizens.  This bill would put some of those cameras in public meetings, so that citizens can track the work of their government.  In all, happy news for Independence Day.

Tip of the hat to Stephanie Davis and PatriotGamesMedia.

Censorship it easy to spot when China or Iran simply turn off media channels. However, in the US, well-meaning local agencies are also advancing censorship.

Want a job? Give us your social media passwords.
The City of Bozeman, Montana, has a long-standing policy of requiring job applicants to provide usernames and passwords for “any and all current personal or business Web sites, web pages, or memberships on any Internet-based chat rooms, social clubs, or forums, to include, but not limited to: Facebook, Google, Yahoo, YouTube.com, MySpace, etc”.

National coverage has caused the city to reconsider the policy. Bozeman City Attorney Greg Sullivan said in The Daily Chronicle that the policy may change – instead of asking applicants for login information, applicants would be required to “friend” officials on Facebook so the city could see the individual’s profile, for example. What’s next, diary screening? Government employees have privacy too, right?

Update: On Monday night, the city issued a release (PDF) stating it would henceforth cease the practice of requesting candidates’ login information.

Old English font is NOT for teens
The principal of the high school in Orange, California, has confiscated copies of a student magazine prior to publication.  His main complaint about the latest issue of PULP concerns the cover, which features a faux full-back tattoo with the publication’s name and a picture of a panther, the school mascot.

The principal alleges that the image promotes gang life and might encourage students to get tattoos, singling out the use of Old English font to create “gangster-style writing.” The principal agreed to allow the magazine’s publication if it carried an “anti-tattoo” message. This undercuts the legitimate gang concern, as tattoos don’t cause gangs, and are in fact a further form of self expression. Students can use any font they want, right?

Read more on the Citizen Media Law Project.

UMass Student Leaders Compel Conservative Apology
The Legal Satyricon illuminates state-backed censorship voted in by student leaders at UMass:

Continued

Any way you read the data, the exercise of blog valuation done by 24/7 Wall St. casts a new light on changes in advertising, the involvement of founding owners, and changing tastes.

Admittedly, these are estimates of value, which, absent an actual buyer, is at best informed conjecture. OK, its one blogger spouting off about the value of another blogger’s blog. But 24/7 did have some of their estimations validated by actual sales last year.  And even if we’re skeptical, comparing data from this year to last year can give a sense of the market’s direction and velocity.

So now that we’ve consumed more than a grain of salt, here’s what their results suggest to me.

Continued

Two weeks ago, the Senate considered a lobbying reform bill which would reportedly have required bloggers who communicate to more than 500 members of the public on public policy matters to register and report quarterly to Congress, in much the same way as K Street lobbyists.

The blog Wonkette reports that this over-reaching requirement was removed from the final bill by Senate Republicans. All but six of our freedom-loving Democratic majority voted to keep the registration requirement in the bill, but these votes allowed the Republican minority to remove the requirement.

Yesterday’s announcement that The Christian Science Monitor will end daily publication this spring in favor of online journalism and a new weekly publication is more a relief (and a joy) than a shock to many of its biggest fans.

I spent several years working with the church’s publications, including helping set online strategy for the Monitor. I’d like to offer a few observations why this makes sense as a first step – and how much further the Monitor could go to wrap its quality journalism with a forward looking business model and content strategy.

• The Monitor is a bit like The Economist, if it were served in daily increments. Subscribers receive it by postal mail a day or two after its printing.  Making it a weekly makes tons of sense. In a world where USA Today can be on my doorstep every morning, a daily that arrives a day or two late stopped making sense long ago.
• Its current audience is old. Print newspapers (especially world news) don’t play to the younger crowd. When you can get the full edition of the Monitor online for free, doesn’t it seem wasteful to print and mail it?
• It’s loved by bloggers. As its print circulation fell, the Monitor was hailed as the most blogged newspaper (per subscriber) in the world. The Monitor is in a fantastic position to aggregate a global cadre of local journalists and writers, and use its good name and editorial grace to publish news and elevate “non-sensational” writers so their perspectives may be considered. (They haven’t proposed using bloggers as described here, but don’t you think they should?)
• Church officials (not news staffers) have grumbled publicly about the Monitor’s podcasting experiments. But multimedia is the future of online journalism. The church ran radio and television networks and has in-house production capabilities. Of any print news organization, it is best equipped to embrace the mulitmedia and interactivity resources needed to aggregate large audiences.

While there is simply no future in selling PDFs of newspapers—or worse, small-format printed papers delayed a day or two by mailing—there is a future online.

1. The future for newspapers is in multimedia. I was on a panel discussion a few months ago and someone said it out loud: “Reading is for suckers.” Okay, that’s harsh, but it makes the point that subscribers want to select the format of their media, and plain text or html is still just one media.

Continued

Jeff Ooi gained notoriety by writing a daily Malaysian political blog. Like a lot of bloggers, he poured hours of personal time into it every day. Along the way, he exposed corruption and found a voice for demanding more competent government. Last March he posted a banner ad on his site: “Get a Blogger Into Parliment.” Eleven days later, his campaign began with $25,000 in donations. The Christian Science Monitor wrote a great feature about his election, and how new media has opened up Malaysia’s political process to new energy and ideas. Many politicians today have blogs, but this is another case in which social media is driving political change.

FCC Commissioner McDowell Proposed Crackpot Threat to Bloggers
While addressing the conservative Heritage Foundation, FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell made a lame attempt to suggest this election is about preventing Democrats from using the FCC to regulate content on Internet blogs. Of course, there’s no legal basis for the FCC to regulate content on personal servers, and network neutrality focuses on providing access to data regardless of its format, let alone its content. However, Commissioner McDowell’s FCC has considered requiring censorship (filtering) of public Wi-Fi networks. So, Commissioner, what’s this election about again?

Why Should Terrorists Get Free Music?
Copyright societies can be relentless about collecting fees from nursing homes, hospitals, prisons and such, on the basis that these are “public” places. Never mind that the audience is captive and it’s their home (like it or not). So what about music used as torture in Guantanamo? Though international human rights may not apply there, what about international copyrights? This question exposes the absurdity of both accepting torture and copyright over-reach. See Wired article.

Wikipedia Wins “Dumbest” Defamation Lawsuit
Literary agent Barbara Bauer sued the Wikimedia Foundation over posted statements that identified her as among the “dumbest of the twenty worst” literary agents and claimed that she had “no documented sales at all.” This New Jersey judge dismissed the case, citing protections afforded to online service providers under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. See the EFF’s press release.

WhoCanSue.com
This prelaunch website aims to become the Lending Tree of lawyers. Of course, currency is a commodity, so it’s easy to bid for, but finding the right lawyer depends on an array of personal factors. Perhaps WhoCanSue should be trying to be eHarmony for lawyers and clients?