Newsu Course on Online Media Law

Newsu course review

The course through the newsu website was “Online Media Law: The Basics for Bloggers and Other Publishers”.  This course goes through three main aspects in relation to blogging and publishing articles on the internet. 

Defamation is one of these aspects.  This basically is the publication of a false statement that damages the reputation of a person or business.  People are divided into two categories, private and public.  People that fall into the public category must meet certain criteria, public figures are obviously considered public, and it is generally people that are known from movie stars to local figures that are known within a community.  Directors of company’s can fall into this category also, especially if the company is well known.  With private figures it may be more difficult to peruse legal action in a defamation case.

The copyright infringement section of the course explains to the reader, the methods of avoiding liability when it comes to copyright infringement.  An example from the course would be where someone sets up a blog that allows other people to post on it.  If the third party blogger was to post copyrighted material on your blog, you would not be liable if you have followed procedures for notifying the user and takedown the material.  The term used to describe this was “safe harbour”.

If you publish information about someone, whether true or false, you may become legally liable.  One of the chapters from the course that remains in my head is “intrusion upon exclusion”, this protects people from invasion of privacy in a place where you should expect to have privacy. 

It was interesting to learn about these laws that protect your privacy, reputation and work.  From the other side, it is interesting and important to know how to protect yourself from exposure to legal liability.

Thanks for reading,

Colm

Movie Review

American Hustle 2013

This movie is set in the 70s with the typical music and cloths to suit.  The movie begins with Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale) standing in front of a mirror, gluing his comb-over down to his scalp. Pretty bizarre, but it quickly goes from this and gives you a since of what the movie will be about when Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams) and Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper) all come together and in an almost comical dialect, begin sparring off each other. 

The story jumps back to an earlier time before Richie met the other two, and gives a quick, but detailed view of the lives of Irving and Sydney and how they met.  They begin working together in a dodgy loan business where they take a non-refundable deposit for the promise of loan, but of course there never was a loan.  Richie DiMaso first appears as a new “customer” looking for money but it turns out he works for the FBI and uses the incriminating evidence to blackmail the pair into working with him. 

As the story goes on, it delves deeper into the life of Irving and we discover he has an adopted kid, whose mother had some hold over Irving.  One of the quotes that sticks out is of how Irving describes her as “The Picasso of passive aggressive karate”.  She has a bigger role to play as the movie goes on and with a description like this you might expect her to be entertaining but I found her irritating. 

Throughout the movie you get a feeling each are out to con each-other, but as the story unravels this feeling fades a little.  Without spoiling the movie for anyone else I will leave it there.

If I had to rate it out of 5, it would get 3.5  Anyway, enjoy.

Colm

Something about me!

I am a 1^st year computing student studying in Cork Institute of Technology.  One of six modules in the second semester is web publishing, where we have been asked to set up a blog and write three hundred words about ourselves.

Well here it goes, I enjoy sports, poker and love my TV shows / movies.

I was playing with a local soccer team for a number of years until, just over a year ago my back started slowing me down because of disk problems but I swore to myself that I will play again before I am too old.  I follow Liverpool football club, and this is a sweat time for us reds supporters with a young fast team that can only improve in my opinion, contrary to what some people think, but what do they know?

Poker... oh sweet poker, Texas Hold'em to be more precise is quite addictive but so much fun.  I think it goes something like this; if you lose money you are amateur whereas, if you win money you are professional, also if you’re not in you can’t win.  To contradict myself, it is not fun when you encounter bad beats, everyone’s heard of river rats but in poker this refers to someone who, against all logical since and odds, manages to still be in the round of betting only to be blessed with a miracle river card to fill a set of cards to beat you.  If I used hash tags, it would be followed by RAGE.

TV shows for me are a great way to spend my free time or, my not so free time also.  This year I started watching Sons of Anarchy, six seasons in three weeks.  Some people like to read books, I like to watch TV shows.

Just a quick note on privacy on the Internet, I think there is little to none.  Anyway, thanks for reading.
Later.

Colm.