Citizen Journalism, Day 1: Law
| | Phil: 
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| | fairly rare treat to be one of a small handful of law people in the minority in a HLS class.
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| | this is the boring lawyering stuff that isn't boring if you're on the receiving end of a headline like the one in the NYT where a delaware guy tried to find the names of anonymous bloggers. or...
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| | writing a headine about yourself saying you're a subjuect of a federal lawsuit about copyright infringement and other awfulalities.
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| | YOu create the risk that you will say or reveal things that others don't want you to say or reveal.
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| | Good thing: lawsuits against CJs are very rare.
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| | Lots of cases that don't turn into headlines. More likely are cease & desist notice, or a nasty letter. So the blogger takes down the information, and the whole thing goes away.
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| | Ron Coleman Quote: most cases intend to intimidate, knowing that bloggers don't have the pockets. that's the real danger, the chilling effect.
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| | Want to focus on the "at least not yet" part of this. The maine case illustrates this.
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| | We have a new collaboration designed to do what Bob and the media and others are doing... try to provide comprehensive info, do a better job of answering questions, tracking threats that never make it to cases, providing resources, legal guides, references to lawyers and so on. In order to do that, want to know what you're up against.
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| | We want to work with people like Bob Cox, and others who want to avoid getting sued in the first place, yet remain as fearless as possible.
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| | Broad brush description of the legal background here...
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| | First, sometimese the law is good for you.
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| | Your writing, your original work... is increasingly being hijacked by blog spammers using it to make money without giving you credit. The law is on your side here. Creative Commons has lots of licenses. but affirmative licensing can actually help you. Law can also help facilityate opening up information. Freedom of information law for example.
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| | Defamation is the first. People get unhappy about something you, or a guest, wrote.
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| | Anonymity. Could be that a CJ wants or needs to be anonymous. Somebody may want to use you to get to those people.
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| | Sources. these often need to be anonymous too.
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| | IP -- copyright. any time you quote from or use somebody else's words, there are issues about what circumstances are in play. Fair use, etc.
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| | Fighting back, pushing back on bad-faith threats
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| | Anti-SLAPP suits. (stragegic lawsuits against public participation) Shooting back at frivolous lawsuits.
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| | DMCA ¤ 512 (f) improper takedown suits. We saw that where the law student sued Diebold after the company used the DMCA improperly.
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| | Media bloggers association
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| | Creative Commons/Berkman Center podcasters legal guide
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