I’m delighted to announce that as of yesterday evening incsub is the new host of the most broadly read education weblog on the internet, Will Richardson’s Weblogg-Ed.
It’s a great arrangement… I can support Will in his new endeavours by taking hosting costs / concerns out of his hands and giving him a much more powerful blogging tool (exporting Manila to WordPress is FUN – heh – not really) and in return edublogs.org gets a nice little badge and I get a warm fuzzy feeling.
And I’ve freed up at least 4 hours a year spent ribbing him about moving to WordPress !
The design is only 75% there, but I’m a great believer in getting stuff out and then working on it so you should be able to see it improve over the next few days / weeks. Go tell him how great it is… you can actually comment now too :D
IANAL but INAL – I am not a lawyer but I need one :)
More specifically I’d be *enormously* grateful if anyone out there could help to illuminate or guide my thinking on the legal position regarding the posting of copyright infringing, defamatory or libellous material on a community website. Both regarding one that’s based on comments (i.e. an individuals blog, or, for example The Guardian’s Comment is Free) and on blogs (i.e. edublogs, blogger or, for example Le Monde Blogs).
As far as I understand it the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is the best place to start for copyright concerns and as Australia and the US have a free trade agreement it’s likely to be a good standard for me to look at… essentially you won’t be held responsible for breaches of copyright by users if:
-You put up a notice on the site specifying where copyright complaints should go
-If a complaint is submitted you act straight away and if it holds up that material is removed straight away
-You put up, somewhere, a DMCA compliance page (like this one)
[Abridged from Derek Powazek’sDesign for Community]
However, am not sure at all how this applies to libellous and/or defamatory content, as defined by the EFF. For example, if an edublogs.org or a Le Monde user was to post along these lines would the organisation / company / person providing that service be held responsible for that content or, as with the DCMA, are there ways in which sites can be compliant without requiring pre-moderation of all content?
Now, it’s pretty clear (in US law at least) that the republication of libellous content is not something that individuals or organisations can be held responsible for, this 2003 Wired article provides a pretty comprehensive overview:
The court based its decision on a section of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, or the CDA. That section states, “… no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”
large commercial web publishers are generally protected from liability over third-party comments posted on their websites
And even further into the archives I also found Cubby v Compuserve from 1991 where the judge wrote:
CompuServe has no more editorial control over such a publication than does a public library, book store, or newsstand, and it would be no more feasible for CompuServe to examine every publication it carries for potentially defamatory statements than it would be for any other distributor to do so
Which, while compuserve is obviously an ISP (it’d be a bit like holding a telephone company responsible for libellous calls ;) does give some precedence for sites such as the ones I’ve mentioned to in effect gain more protection from libellous commentary if they actually step well back from editing / moderation.
But I’m yet to find any useful items in Australia…
Essentially my thoughts are that if the site:
-Makes fully clear that users are responsible for their own content
-Frames / positions the site in such a way that it is clearly understood to not be pre-moderated or even ‘post-screened’ content
-Has a clear notice on the site (or indeed on each piece of content) stating where complaints regarding libellous / defamatory content should go
-Immediately investigates and takes appropriate action in the case of a complaint
There should be no liability taken on by the provider of the service.
Obviously this is not a black and white area but I’d really really appreciate if people could share how right or how wrong you think I might be and why… and if you’ve got any lawyer friends (does anyone know Lessig :) if you wanted to ping them this post for their thoughts… well, you’d be a bit of a legend!
Well, have had a pretty extreme few weeks, to say the least. Many many things from some forthcoming developments at edublogs.org to the phantasmagorical world of Ben Barren and some really cool developments at The Knowledge Tree.
Add to that some seriously funky WordPress work (on both sides of that big old pond up there), conducting some pretty sweeping research across the uses of blogs in Higher Education here at the Uni and some even more exciting stuff that I’m not even going to hint at… and yes, I’m starting to come across as a pretty crummy blogger ;)
However! [dramatic flourish] None of this will keep me from the very cool HigherEd BlogCon which has just kicked off and who have been the *very essence* of understanding in allowing me a bit of breathing space for my webcast ‘Blogs as personal learning environments’ which will air on Friday alongside, rather coolly, Ewan’s contribution… we should see how many time the word ‘edublogs’ or ‘edu.blogs’ can possibly get mentioned in two sessions ;)
So head over there, and please bear with me if I take a little longer to respond to email / IM than usual.
A combination of half term, conferences and lots of work has meant that I haven’t had any real ‘time out’ for about a month now… that’s about to change though as we scoot off (sans kids) for a long weekend not just off the net but off the grid entirely.
Well, what’s worse than only being able to get online for 30 mins a day… howabout a combination of Windows / Phoenix wiping all you application data… emails.. EVERYTHING… because you had the cheek to hibernate with a few applications running and then restart with a weak wireless connection.
So, am going to get to spend the rest of my time in NZ figuring out how to manage this… bugger.
Update: Silly me, just XP corrupting my local settings… which I could fix if I had admin on this computer… but as it’s a works one, I naturally don’t. Sigh!
Great first day of Blog Hui, unfortunately no wireless in venue or hotel though so am only online in cafes for about an hour a day… so do excuse poor response time for emails etc.
If yer interested here are my MindManager notes for day 1 , don’t use the subheadings though…. and don’t tell me how crap the MM output is either, I know! Am running my presentation tomorrow as an interactive mindmap on organisational / MU blogging, will post that for your viewing displeasure too :)
Ah well, it’s surely a stuff up on the Technorati front but at this present moment and preserved below for posterity incsub is currently occupying the number 2 spot.
Do I get a badge?
(p.s. it may still be there when you’re reading this… go look, go look!)
Update: Ahhh… back to normal now, nevermind… however, have gone from 483 to 354! BoingBoing watch your back ;)
IANAL but INAL – I am not a lawyer but I need one :)
