10 Essential Legal Points for Bloggers
Every day, millions of bloggers post content online. Millions more people read and comment on blogs. With all that communication, some interesting legal issues are bound to arise. This article looks at 10 major legal points that bloggers must know and offers some suggestions about how to work with them.
1. Develop a “legal consciousness” about blogging. Like any publications, blogs frequently create legal questions. However, there is no need to fear those issues. Instead, being aware of the possibility of such concerns will help you identify them and manage them effectively. This article presents some of the most common legal issues that arise.
As you read it, consider how those issues apply to your blog. Also, it is good to develop the habit of looking for legal questions as you post new content on your blog. Using the major points in this article as a guide, you can ask yourself, “Are there any potential legal problems here?” whenever you update your blog. This simple practice will help you identify important legal questions and resolve them before they have a chance to cause problems.
2. Read carefully and understand the agreements related to your blog. Depending on how you host, manage, promote, and monetize your blog, the exact agreements you enter will vary somewhat, but here are some common agreements that will affect most bloggers:
- Web and blog hosting agreements, including terms of service and acceptable use policies;
- content-sharing agreements and licenses;
- syndication agreements; and
- affiliate, revenue-sharing, and advertising programs.
You should assume that these agreements are valid, enforceable contracts that you must follow. Of course, if you have questions about any agreements or policies or their validity, you should consult with a lawyer to learn about your rights and duties. However, it is reasonable to expect that in most cases you will have to abide by these agreements as you operate your blog, so it is worth your time to become familiar with them.
3. Adopt basic legal policies for your blog. Most blogs can benefit from a “terms of use” agreement. This policy explains how visitors to your blog may use your site and its content. It is the fundamental agreement between you and visitors to your site. The particulars of terms of use agreements vary from one blog to another, but some common provisions include disclaimers of warranties on any of the content, limitation of the blog publisher’s liability, restrictions about how the blog’s content can be used, netiquette policies governing comments posted on the blog, and so forth.
A privacy policy is also an important document for blogs today. Participants in blog conversations are concerned about identity theft and the security of their information. Establishing and following a privacy policy for your blog assures visitors that their personal information will be protected and encourages them to join the discussions at your blog. Here at Daily Blog Tips, Aditya Mahesh recently outlined the basic points that all good blog privacy policies have. Following those points will give you a great start on developing a privacy policy for your blog.
User-generated content (UGC) is becoming an increasingly important source of potential legal disputes. Content-sharing sites may be the most obvious example of participatory media and UGC, but blogs allow users to generate content in the form of comments. A useful policy for UGC will answer the following questions:
- who owns the content that users post?
- how can the blog’s publisher use the UGC?
- how can other users use the content?
- do visitors to the blog have the right to change or remove their content?
- how will you handle UGC that infringes upon another person’s intellectual property rights or is illegal?
- how will disputes over UGC be resolved?
Please note that the questions listed above are just starting points. A complete UGC policy will answer those questions and several others that apply to the particular kind of blog you publish.
4. Protect your copyright in your original work. Unfortunately, a lot of blog content is being copied and used all over the Web without the permission of the content’s creators. Preventing copyright infringement and plagiarism can be difficult and costly, but there are some simple things you can do to address the problem.
- display a copyright notice conspicuously on each page of your blog;
- register your copyright in your blog with the United States Copyright Office or the copyright registration authority in your country;
- license your work to your blog’s visitors (Creative Commons offers a number of standard licenses that you can use, if you don’t want to create your own from scratch); and
- learn more about the problem of online plagiarism by reading authoritative information, such as Daily Blog Tips’ “Blog Plagiarism Q & A” and Jonathan Bailey’s PlagiarismToday site.
5. Respect others’ content and do not infringe upon it. You can avoid many disputes in the blogosphere if you respect others’ copyrights and trademarks. Here are a few tips to help you avoid infringing on others’ intellectual property.
For copyrights:
- assume all content, whether online or offline, is protected by copyright unless you are certain that it is in the public domain;
- get written permission to use copyrighted content and store that writing in a safe place in case you need it later;
- always acknowledge the source of content and, if the copyright owner requests a certain format for the attribution, use it;
- follow best practices related to copyright law; and
- be extremely careful about “fair use” of copyrighted works. The legal factors that determine whether a given use of copyrighted content is a “fair use” may look simple and obvious, but they can be very difficult to apply in practice. If you are unsure about whether your proposed use is a fair use, consult with a lawyer. Even if you are sure that you are making fair use of a copyrighted work, you will still be wise to do everything you reasonably can to obtain written permission to use that work, to avoid the possibility of disputes later.
For trademarks:
- show the trademark symbol (”®” for registered trademarks, and “TM” for common law trademarks) immediately after the trademark;
- follow the trademark owner’s guidelines for using the mark in blogs and commentary (for an example of such guidelines, see the LEGO® Fair Play policy); and
- do not suggest that the trademark owner approves of your content, endorses your site, or is affiliated with you. Instead, display a statement prominently that says you are not affiliated with the trademark owner and that the owner has not approved or endorsed your blog or its content.
6. Before you post statements of fact, be sure those statements are true. Obviously, very few bloggers will intentionally publish false information. However, in the rush to cover topics quickly, ahead of other bloggers and ahead of the mainstream media, bloggers face increasing pressure to “get it first and get it right.” Unfortunately, though, sometimes speed comes at the cost of accuracy. Sacrificing accuracy can cause at least three big problems for the blogger.
First, someone may accuse the blogger of libel because he or she misstated the facts.
Second, you and your blog will lose credibility. In the short term, lost credibility may cost you readers and advertisers. In the longer term, lost credibility may affect your ability to successfully publish other blogs.
Third, if you are selling goods, services, or information through your blog, misrepresenting certain facts can subject you to liability for fraud and violation of applicable consumer protection laws.
7. Consider special problems that can arise in the workplace.
Several disputes have arisen between employers and employees over blogging. Some bloggers have even lost their jobs. There are a few basic rules to follow in the workplace to avoid problems.
If you are an employee, don’t blog on your employer’s time or using your employer’s computer systems or network, unless you have your employer’s explicit written permission. Such practices are likely against the employer’s rules and you probably don’t have any legal right to use the employer’s equipment for personal blogging.
An exception to this general rule occurs when you are writing content for an official company blog that your employer sponsors. In that case, you have the employer’s permission, but you should verify that your blog postings comply with the company’s policies for online content. If you are not sure about the applicability of your employer’s policy, ask your manager.
If you are an employer, make sure your employees understand your company’s policies about blogging. Your blogging policies should be in writing and you should ask employees to sign a statement that says they have read and understood the policy and agree to comply with it. As with any other policies, you should enforce your blogging policies consistently and fairly.
8. If you publish a collaborative or group blog, make sure all the contributors know their rights and responsibilities concerning the blog and its content. The more people you have contributing content to a blog, the greater the potential for disputes. To avoid conflict, it is useful to develop a written agreement with the other bloggers that addresses, at a minimum, the following points:
- who owns the copyright to the individual blog posts?
- who owns the copyright to the blog as a whole?
- can individual bloggers republish their blog posts on other blogs or in other publications, whether online or offline?
- under what circumstances may individual bloggers remove their blog posts from the group blog?
- do bloggers retain any interest in the blog’s content, including in their individual contributions to it, after they leave the blog?
- who is entitled to revenue that the blog generates?
- who is responsible for paying the blog’s expenses?
- how will disputes among bloggers be resolved?
- how will the various affairs of the blog be concluded if the blog ceases publication?
9. Blog anonymously, if your identity, reputation, or personal safety are at risk. In some cases, the only reasonable way to communicate your message–and to make it likely that you will be able to continue blogging–is to blog anonymously. While some countries, such as the United States of America, guarantee a legal right to communicate anonymously, exercising that right on the Internet is not necessarily easy because a blogger may leave various clues about his or her identity at numerous points in the blogging process. While a complete discussion of the technical means to blog anonymously is beyond the scope of this article, here are two resources that will help you navigate those technical issues.
- The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s How to Blog Safely (About Work or Anything Else)
- Reporters Without Borders, “How to blog anonymously,” in Handbook for bloggers and cyber-dissidents.
10. Learn more about the basics of the laws that affect bloggers. There is much more to the law of blogging than a brief article can cover. Moreover, as blogging becomes more popular, blogging law is developing rapidly. Therefore, learning about the legal issues of blogging is an ongoing process.
Happily, there are several good resources available to help you stay up to date on legal matters. One source of information is bloggers’ conferences and conventions. Those meetings often hold sessions or workshops that present the latest legal developments that bloggers need to know. Additionally, there are several online publications that explain the law in much greater detail and provide a variety of examples to guide you through the legal maze. Here are a few samples of those texts.
- Daily Blog Tips, “12 U.S. Laws Bloggers Should Know“
- Electronic Frontier Foundation, Legal Guide for Bloggers
- Colette Vogele, Mia Garlick, and the Berkman Center Clinical Program in Cyberlaw, Podcasting Legal Guide: Rules for the Revolution
Bonus tip: Get periodic legal checkups of your blog.
Although this article presents a do-it-yourself approach to identifying and managing the major legal issues you are likely to face as a blogger, you can also benefit by having a lawyer conduct a legal checkup of your blog periodically, perhaps once each year. An increasing number of lawyers now offer preventive services such as legal checkups and those preventive reviews can help you identify and correct potential legal problems with your blog and learn about some of the more recent developments in the law that concern bloggers.
________________
Steve Imparl is a lawyer, writer, and blogger who concentrates his work on the legal issues related to the Internet, e-commerce, and blogging. His law firm Web site and blog are at http://www.imparl.com.
Although this article was written by a lawyer, it presents general information and does not constitute legal advice. Further, your reading and using any information in this article does not create an attorney-client relationship between you and the author. If you need specific advice about your blog, please consult with a lawyer licensed to practice in your jurisdiction.
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8 Addictive Habits of Bloggers
As bloggers we face a wide variety of task each day in managing and building our blog. Productivity and efficiency is a must, especially for part-time bloggers. Standing in the way of productivity is a number of habits that tend to be extremely addictive and time-consuming for most of us. I think I have personally struggled with each of these at one point or another, and I’m sure that you can relate. Let’s take a look at each of these habits and how you can overcome the addiction.
1. Obsessing Over Subscribers
The number of subscribers to a blog is probably the most common measuring stick for determining the blogs impact, importance, or success. As a result, all of us make an attempt to gain new subscribers on a daily basis, and many times this turns into more of an obsession than a goal.
While building a large base of subscribers is important for any blog, putting too much focus on a number can do more harm than good. First of all, you can’t force anyone to subscribe, so you are not in complete control of the situation, which makes it frustrating. Second, not all subscribers are equal. Loyal and involved subscribers are much more valuable to a blog than someone who subscribes but never actually reads. It’s impossible to look at a subscriber count and know what type of involvement the audience has. Sometimes an unhealthy obsession with subscriber counts will lead you to make decisions that will harm your blog in the long run.
How to kick the habit
Rather than focusing so much on your subscriber count, focus on building active readers and developing relationships with them. While it’s fine to have goals for reaching a specific number of subscribers, don’t let that determine your success or failure. There’s much more to blogging than just the number of subscribers. If you need to, develop some other goals that will take some of the emphasis away from your subscriber count.
2. Checking Stats Constantly
Just like subscriber counts can be addictive, so can traffic stats. Useful tools like Google Analytics can become a nightmare if you spend too much time looking at your referral stats, search engine traffic, and most popular pages. While I do feel that analysis is a necessary part of blogging, it’s also easy to go overboard. Do you really need to check your stats every couple of hours? Checking constantly isn’t going to change the results.
How to kick the habit
Set a specific time each day or each week to check stats and don’t do it any other time. Give yourself a few minutes at a time and that should be sufficient. You may also want to allot a little bit more time once a month to do more in-depth analysis.
3. Chasing Social Media Traffic
Social media presents an incredible opportunity for bloggers, but it also becomes a huge distraction for many. Especially Digg. I do believe that targeting social media users with your content is a great way to bring new visitors to your blog, but chasing social media traffic with each post is overkill. I’ve seen many bloggers that constantly use Digg buttons on their posts with very poor results.
How to kick the habit
Only submit your best work to social media. Don’t try to push everything you publish, because it simply won’t work that way. You’ll have much better success if you only promote your best work, rather than trying too hard to make a square peg fit into a round hole.
4. Excessive Use of Social Media
While going after traffic from social media can be a big distraction, surfing around social media sites looking at popular content can also be a big time waster. I’m an active user of social media, so I’m not suggesting that you should never visit these sites, but avoid spending hours each day looking at sites just for fun. I think StumbleUpon is especially addictive for many bloggers.
How to kick the habit.
Set aside a specific amount of time for visiting social media. By limiting yourself you will still be able to find the valuable content that is available, but you will refrain from reading too much about things that really don’t pertain to you.
5. RSS Feeds
How many feeds do you have in your RSS reader? How many do you actually read? Most of us spend a lot of time each day just wading through feeds that we don’t have much interest in. Subscribing to other feeds in your niche is a good habit, but within reason. Most of us don’t have a few hours each day to read through the feeds that we subscribe to.
How to kick the habit
I like to go through my subscriptions every couple of months and get rid of anything that I haven’t read in a while. If the odds of you reading a feed are unlikely, don’t let it waste your time everyday, just get rid of it.
6. Forums
Web forums are a great place to network and help others, but if you’re not careful you can spend way more time there than you intended. Some forums really become addictive when you get an email notification anytime someone replies to your post in the thread.
How to kick the habit
Like many of the other items already discussed, forum use should be limited to a specific amount of time. Additionally, only opt to get email notifications on threads that are important where you really don’t want to miss a response, and unsubscribe once you’ve received the response that you need.
7. Rankings
PageRank, Alexa rank, Technorati rank. All of these are helpful for knowing where you stand and motivating yourself for continued growth (plus for selling ads), but don’t put more weight in them than they deserve. Rankings can never tell you whether or not a blog is successful, so don’t obsess over your rankings to the point that it hurts your productivity
How to kick the habit
I think one of the most important things you can do here is to simply recognize that these rankings are meaningless unless you allow them to be significant. Once you see that they really don’t make or break your blog, chances are you’ll stop worrying about them. Focus on creating the best blog that you can and the rankings will take care of themselves.
8. Email/IM
Communicating with other bloggers is an important part of networking, but for many of us the amount of time we spend on these activities keeps growing and growing out of control.
How to kick the habit
Organization is really important to reducing the time spent on email. If you get the same questions over and over again, you can either develop templates to answer these questions (then cut and paste into your email) or set up a detailed FAQ page. Using folders effectively will also help you to manage your inbox more efficiently. Probably the most important thing you can do is limit the amount of times each day that you check your email. Learn to work with it closed rather than open. Also, don’t feel like you have to respond to every single email you receive. You may want to consider putting a brief statement on your contact form that you get more email than you are able to respond to. Darren Rowse recently wrote an excellent post about some improvements that he made in this area.
Your Turn:
What are your blogging addictions? How do you overcome them?
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Why Bloggers Should Have a Privacy Policy, and 9 Points to Include in Yours
This is a guest post by Aditya Mahesh.
With the way technology is evolving these days, it is no surprise that people are worried about online fraud, identity theft, and the misuse of their personal information. They need to be assured that sensitive data will be protected when using technology, and this applies to web surfing as well.
One of the easiest ways to fix this problem is the creating a Privacy Policy. After all, most major websites have privacy policies, so why shouldn’t blogs? This is especially true when many readers will give you their e-mail address and other personal information to interact with the website, whether it be by posting a comment or signing up for an online newsletter or e-mail RSS feed.
Creating a privacy policy isn’t too difficult. The document should be unique to your blog, but there are a number of issues that all privacy policies should include:
1. Explicit that you won’t sell or give away any user’s e-mail addresses. This is self-explanatory, people don’t want their e-mail addresses to spread across the web, so don’t release e-mail addresses.
2. Make sure to talk about how you may collect information on the browsing habits of users and share this information with advertisers. Also mention that your site may use cookies. Talk about all types of information that you collect (e.g., browser, operating system, IP address, country) and how this information is used.
3. Make sure that you say that you are NOT responsible for the privacy policies for any sites you link to.
4. Reserve the right to change the Privacy Policy at any time.
5. Make sure to provide some method of contact for users concerned about your blog’s privacy policies, preferable inside the Privacy Policy itself.
6. Make it easy to read and understand. If you throw in a lot of legal jargon, people won’t understand it and it will be useless.
7. Obviously, make sure to follow all outlines you set for yourself in the Privacy Policy.
Some points added by Daniel:
8. Depending on the content of your site you might want to add that the use of your site is intended for people who are eighteen (18) years or older.
9. If you plan to contact people that access your site for any reason, make sure to add a clause mentioning that. You could write: “Unless you ask us not to, Website-Name may contact you via email to tell you about promotions, new services or changes to these policies.”
Please note that the author of this article is not a lawyer, but rather a fellow blogger sharing his experiences with the privacy policies he has created for many of his blogs.
Aditya Mahesh is the founder of BlogOnExpo.com, a social media site for “Make Money Online” articles. If you want traffic and links to your make money online blog or want to find more make money online articles, check it out.
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8 Post Types To Expand and Highlight Your Blog’s Content
This is a guest post by James.
If you are struggling for content or want to expand the number of posts your blog has, having regular features that highlight existing content, whether on your blog or elsewhere, is a good approach. Below are some of the most common and popular features that you can implement on your site.
1. Best or popular posts
A common feature on many blogs. It basically involves listing the best or most popular posts over the previous week or month (depending on how often you update). If you are an avid reader of the blog this may not offer much, but for everyone else it’s a great way of showcasing your best content without all the filler in between. Be sure to encourage readers to check out and leave comments on any posts they missed.
Example: Zen Habits
2. Best comments
An excellent way of boosting reader interaction as it rewards those who comment regularly. When doing a post like this try and tie the highlighted comments together rather than just picking random ones. Also, prioritize regular commentators by mentioning their name and website.
Example: Organize IT
3. A year ago
Similar to the best post feature, only this one delves into the misty past to highlight top content from a year ago. Not much good if you don’t have an old enough blog or a deep archive, but it’s still a great way of showcasing all those forgotten about posts and giving them a bit of extra life
Example: Unclutterer
4. Coming soon
Enticing readers with upcoming, intriguing content is a great way of encouraging people to subscribe to your feed. Just make sure you can deliver on it. If you are a regular poster who sticks to a solid schedule this can be a great way of creating anticipation for a new week or month. If you just post when you feel like it this may not work for you.
Example: ProBlogger
5. Interesting links
An old school technique. This feature has the added benefit of attracting the attention of other bloggers, who are usually appreciative of others linking to their posts. Just be sure to provide a solid amount of links for the reader to delve into.
Example: Lifehack.org
6. Ask the readers
A great way of encouraging reader interaction. It allows you to take the backseat while the readers provide the value with their comments. Just be sure to join in the conversation and help it along as necessary. Try combining this with a best comments feature for maximum benefit.
Example: Get Rich Slowly
7. Recap
If you feel you may struggle to provide value with the features above, why not combine them together? It’s a good way of summarizing what’s happened with the blog over the last week or month, highlighting posts, linking to interesting sites and describing what’s upcoming.
Example: Life Optimizer
8. Something a little different
Offer something a little different to your usual content. It could be a funny video, interesting picture… whatever. As long as you are providing plenty of the content your blog is known for, this feature can provide a nice break from the usual ritual.
Example: Daily Blog Tips
James is a blogger and aspiring author who covers productivity, organization and self improvement with an heavy focus on practical, actionable advice. You can check out more of his posts at Organize IT (or alternatively subscribe to the RSS feed)
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Become a Blogging Wizard - 6 Lessons from Harry Potter
This is a guest post by Joshua Clanton, a freelance web designer who blogs about web design, creativity, and productivity.
Humble beginnings, a long arduous struggle, and ultimate triumph… The story of a young wizard? Or the story of a beginning blogger? How about both? Here are six lessons from Harry Potter on how to become a blogging wizard.
1. Everyone’s an outsider at first
When Harry first entered the wizarding world he felt like an outsider. Despite his fame, he knew nothing about how the wizarding world worked, and often made ridiculous mistakes. But with time, Harry learned how things worked and began to fit in. (At least as well as the Boy Who Lived could fit in.)
When you first start out in the blogging world, you’ll probably feel like a bit of an outsider too. This is normal. No one starts out knowing everything there is to know about WordPress, RSS, and the time-tested techniques for writing good content. But all you have to do is stick with it long enough and eventually you’ll learn what you need to know.
2. What you need most are friends
What Harry really needed most as he tried to navigate in his strange new world was someone to show him the ropes. Fortunately, he soon met Ron and Hermione. Harry didn’t choose them because they were well placed and had great connections. Despite Ron’s poverty and Hermione’s half-muggle ancestry, they were the two best friends that he could have made, because they were willing to stick with him and help no matter how bad things seemed.
Bloggers need friends, too. I don’t mean contacts you can network with. I mean people who are willing to help you out just because they like you. If you can find one or two people like that, you’re well ahead of the game.
3. Watch how others work their magic
Despite his natural talents, Harry never did do all that well in formal classes. Instead, he made most of his magical progress by watching others casting spells and trying it for himself.
When you see someone succeeding at blogging (however you define success), watch them closely. Study how they write, how they engage their readers. Then, once you’ve found something that you think ontributes to their success, give it a try!
4. Don’t be afraid to break the rules (but beware the consequences)
In Harry’s struggle with Lord Voldemort, there were many times that he had to decide what was more important: keeping the Hogwarts rules or making progress in the fight against the Dark Lord. Harry almost always chose to break the rules, and this usually turned out for the best, but sometimes it backfired.
In blogging school, as at Hogwarts, there are a lot of rules, especially about writing good content. But sometimes it’s worth your while to break them. The key is in remembering why the rules are there in the first place, and weighing whether the potential advantages outweigh the risks.
5. Shun the dark arts
There is, of course, a much more important set of rules in the wizarding world: the rules forbidding the dark arts. In this there is very little leeway. Use of the dark arts is what separates the followers of Voldemort from the rest of the wizardry world. And though Harry does succumb to the temptation to use them a couple of times, it is something shameful.
In blogging too certain things are forbidden. Things like plagiarism and black hat SEO will not only hurt your reputation, but may bring down the wrath of the Ministry of Magic, er… Google on your head.
6. Give without expecting anything in return
What helps Harry to triumph in the end isn’t his outstanding abilities. Though he is talented, both Dumbledore and Voldemort are more skilled. Instead, it is his willingness to help others, to give his life without expecting anything in return, that really makes the difference.
Giving to others isn’t just a technique for making yourself popular. Though it may help, if that’s your goal, there are probably better uses of your time. But if you want to become a blogging wizard who is not only successful, but also makes the world a little bit better, you need to learn to give without expecting anything in return.
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