Los Angeles lawyer Adrianos Facchetti may seem like a blogger’s worst nightmare - his specialty is in seeking remedies for clients who argue they have been slandered by anyone from anonymous reviewers to legitimate bloggers. However, his Defamation Law Blog contains plenty of useful tips and interesting insight into potential dangers citizen journalists should notice.
One entry, “5 Ways to Avoid Being Sued On Your Blog” contains mostly obvious tips, such as ensuring you’re writing the truth and correcting facts if an error is discovered, but this one was surprising:
Provide A Forum For Opposing Views - There has been an active discussion lately regarding whether bloggers should permit their readers to leave comments on their blogs. Bloggers should permit commentary because it provides a potentially aggrieved party with a forum to voice their concerns about a particular post, instead of in a court room.
Of course, if you have comments, keep an eye on them, and ensure you have a “comment policy” in place that disallows commenters to impersonate others and to put the liability on them for what they write. This doesn’t keep you bulletproof from a potential lawsuit - anyone can sue you, and even if you win in court the legal costs will likely be prohibitive - it may help set a tone.
The Blog Herald has a great guide on creating a comments policy, suggesting a good chunk of language including a “hold harmless” clause:
All comments within this blog are the responsibility of the commenter, not the blog owner, administrator, contributor, editor, or author. By submitting a comment on our blog, you agree that the comment content is your own, and to hold this site, [name], and all subsidiaries and representatives harmless from any and all repercussions, damages, or liability.
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Maybe I’ve been wrong about Twitter
by Mike Crane on June 16, 2009 · 5 comments
in Commenting
I’m not a huge fan of Twitter. I never have been. I think partly it has to do with its dependency and prevalence through text messaging, which I’m very slow at, as well as find very costly (I don’t have a texting plan, so I pay per message). I also think that Twitter is a fad.
At least, I used to.
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