Sunday, 23 February 2014

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

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