Talk It Up!

Three best videos explaining why SOPA is bad

Not sure why SOPA is bad but too lazy to skim the articles? My fave videos explaining the ramifications of SOPA.

Video #1: The Oatmeal

My personal favorite, an absolutely hysterical take on what SOPA would mean for content creators like you and me if enacted as currently written by comic genius Matt Inman of The Oatmeal:

Video #2: Clay Shirkey

Clay Shirkey, Internet activist, NYU professor and author of Here Comes Everybody, giving his TEDsalon talk in New York on the history of music, image and video copyright rights.

The real threat to the enactment of PIPA and SOPA is our ability to share things with one other. What PIPA and SOPA risk doing is taking a centuries old concept, innocent until proven guilty and reversing it--guilty until proven innocent... the threat is this inversion of the burden of proof.

Video #3 Ben Huh of Cheezburger

 And proving yet again that the proponents of the bills haven't actually read them thoroughly and only have a vague idea of what the bill's intent is, rather than how it would actually be applied as written, Ben Huh, CEO of Cheezburger, takes on Rick Cotton of NBC Universal.

And just in case you do want to read more detail, Wired has a great post questioning the economics of copyright infringement and how much the motion picture and music industries are actually suffering.

"You Tweeted WHAT?" : Legal Risks of Social Media

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I know I'm not supposed to play favorites, and truly, I love all of Social Media Breakfast Seattle's speakers equally.

I just believe that Kraig Baker really kicked butt with his info-laden but not jargon-laden talk on the legal risks of social media yesterday morning. Clear, thought-provoking and funny, he walked us through defamation, copyright infringement and even told us the biggest real risk organizations face.

My favorite tidbits:

"Everybody has a free, non-legal remedy [to conflict]. It's called a Twitter feed."

• Before worrying about the liability of social media engagement, ask yourself the question, "Why are you there?" The reason for social media participation should come before the details.
• If you defame someone, it doesn't matter what platform you used to do it. It's still defamation. And BTW, defamation is fact (not opinion) about a living, identifiable person or entity and substantially false.
• Not everyone thinks a viral hit is valuable - driving traffic to a site is not a valid defense against copyright infringement.
• Just because content is posted on the internet or on a social media site doesn't mean you can do whatever you want with it. Copyright still applies.
• Be careful about making promises. A promise by an enthusiastic employee can create liability where none would have existed previously. And even if you don't have legal liability, organizations might experience huge PR headaches and ramifications.
• Nothing will protect you against stupidity - there's no expectation of privacy apart from home and work.
• The NLRB calls Facebook "the new water cooler" and has fought and won against firing employees for work-related negative comments on that social network.
• And more wise words: "Don't confuse not getting caught with being legal." How many of us broke laws just getting here today? That doesn't mean you can't get caught or sued the next time!

Slides of Baker's info-rich and example-rich talk:

You Tweeted WHAT?!: Legal Risks of Social Media

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But it's really not the same without the video, is it? Every social media pro NEEDS to watch this!

 

SMB Seattle Podcast 10: The legal risks of social media

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What liabilities do companies face when using social media platforms? With all the benefits, what risks need to be addressed when creating a social media policy?

This week, before Kraig Baker's presentation, "You Tweeted WHAT?" The Legal Risks of Social Media, I sat down with Baker to pick his brain about trends in privacy and security as well as copyright and liability. To find out more, join us on February 23rd at 7:30 AM at Davis Wright Tremaine for Baker's talk on the risks of engagement in social media. Register here. 

SMB Podcast #10: The Legal Risks of Social Media

Show Notes

3:00 With so many opportunities for information sharing, is privacy even a concept any more? Users are willing to share information with some but not publicly; users have a desire to control their own data; in Europe, the data belongs to the data subject, but in the US we see it as belonging to the person/company that collected the data.

6:45 What will the trend in privacy be: to reveal less information, or will the law catch up with privacy concerns - norms and expectations will change; the law might catch up with location-based advertising, perhaps; we won't match European security principles any time soon

10:15 Compared to the rest of the world, how secure are we with our data? The rest of the world is far more protective, e.g., double opt-ins for newsletters in Germany.

12:30 Liability on the web vs. a newspaper

14:45 What are the risks of creating a society media presence within an organization? The first question is always, "What is your intent with participating in social media?" What people often don't think about addressing in a social media policy, including the good employees wanting to defend the brand or fix a problem, which can create liability that didn't exist previously.

21:30 The benefits are worth it, including analytics regarding trends and common problems and creating ownership within the company

24:30 How will social media affect copyright law and practice? Isn't a reTweet technically copyright infringement? What is different is that in the past, not everyone was a content creator, so expectations are changing.

27:10 "Everybody has an idea about what copyright law is... and for the most part, it's wrong."

27:30 What fair use really is

29:00 How is Creative Commons affecting copyright law? It won't change copyright practice, but we might see more Twitter-like TOS.

31:30 What is the future of privacy? A magic reputation manager that would erase everything embarrassing you did in the past online. :-) Norms will change first; legislation will follow. Advertising will survive as long as people are unwilling to pay for platforms.

For more free Social Media Breakfast Seattle podcasts, visit the SMB Seattle LibSyn page. Or fan us on Facebook or join our LinkedIn group.