A recent piece in Richmond Magazine looks at how area bloggers are thinking about issues of libel is just one example of the growing spotlight on legal issues related to weblogs. NPR's On the Media highlighted the issue earlier today. The NPR piece leads off:
"Every time bloggers hit publish they risk being sued for copyright infringement, invasion of privacy or defamation. While the risk seems small, groups like the Media Bloggers Association say frivolous lawsuits are chilling free speech in the blogosphere. So MBA founder Robert Cox has helped start insurance for bloggers in an attempt to protect against costly litigation."
Listen to the NPR story here; a transcript will be available on Monday:
Back in Richmond, Bill Farrar leads his piece with one of Richmond's top community webloggers, John Murden of Church Hill People's News (CHPN) and other local sites.
CHPN (chpn.net) operator John Murden, the unofficial dean of community Web sites in the Richmond region, says he was “paying close attention” to the exchange.
But he also admits to having only a vague understanding of the legal ramifications surrounding blogs.
“I try to make sure that everything that I say is either a proven fact, or otherwise clearly described as opinion or rumor or whatever,” Murden says. “I’m not clear on what the law is, but it seems like this ought to keep me in the clear.”
If there is any new and largely unexplored territory for free speech today, it is the blogosphere, where anyone with access to a keyboard and Web connection can revel in the immediacy of the Internet. And though Richmond was spotlighted earlier this year as a hotbed for Web-based citizen journalism, the CHPN conflict suggests that the potential legal pitfalls are little more than an afterthought for some bloggers.
The issue emerged in real-time last week when the writer behind one of the region's more popular sites, Jack Goes Forth, revealed that a cease-and-desist letter had arrived in his email box, courtesy of WTVR Channel 6. Bartender-cum-weblogger (I had to work that work in, didn't I?) Jack writes regularly of his bartending nights and the various trysts that precede and follow:
I received an email tonight from someone who claims to be the GM of Channel 6 here in Richmond. He is threatening to sue me for two of my blog posts. One post that mentions how I'm in love with Channel 6 newscastor Lee Mahaffey that I posted three weeks ago here, and the other mentions a run-in with News 6 anchor Ric Young and how he may or may not be a bad tipper, posted (3 months ago) here.
The string of comments following the post give as much insight into Jack's readership as into the varying degrees of concern webloggers and their readers have about the libel issue.
But the issue is a serious one, as I suggested to Farrar in his Richmond Magazine piece (I didn't make the "free access" portion of Farrar's piece; see me in the print version.):
With nearly 400 known bloggers in the Richmond region, an interest in legal issues is starting to emerge, says John Sarvay, one of the area's most prolific and well-read bloggers who airs his views at Buttermilk & Molasses.
"Most people who do blogging have zero knowledge of experience with simple legal issues that most reporters get a regular brushing up on," says Sarvay, who's among a small minority of local bloggers with an actual journalism background.
Does he mean I read a lot, or a lot of people read my writing?
At any rate, in addition to the resources cited in the NPR story above, the Virginia Press Association is offering a bit of education for bloggers interested in protecting their asses and their assets:
On October 23, from 1:00 until 4:00 p.m., Rene Milam of the Newspaper Association of America will deliver a workshop on "Legalities of Online Content":
This interactive workshop will cover the fair use of digital content (particularly video or audio clips), online reporting of sports and entertainment events, social networking issues and liability for posted third-party content, hyper-linking risks, and online privacy considerations, particularly for sites directed at children. Participants will be given guidance and learn strategies for minimizing legal exposure in these areas.
You can download a registration form here.
