PitbLAWg may be AWOL on January 18, 2012.
In a USA Today article “TwitPic, WordPress to go dark for online SOPA protest” Yamiche Alcindor reported that WordPress, along with other websites will not available on Wednesday January 18, 2012 to protest the proposed US legislation, Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect Intellectual Property Act.
WordPress is the host site for PitbLAWg. If WordPress is not available then PitbLAWg will not be online for the day. However, we expect that WordPress and PitbLAWg with be back up and running on Thursday January 19th.
PitbLAWg takes no position on the proposed legislation or on the blackout. Thanks for following PitbLAWg and we hope to see you back on January 19th.
Social media: Is your organization’s head in the sand?
Is your organization in the social media world?
If your answer is “no” you’re wrong. Sorry, but it was a trick question. Whether your organization admits it or not, it is in the social media world. Clients, prospective clients, employees and even competitors are almost certainly engaging in conversations about your organization on Facebook and LinkedIn. The question is whether you’re a part (or even aware) of those conversations. The second question is what are you going to do to shape those conversations, to the extent that you can?
The reality is that Canadian employees, for example, are blogging, tweeting and accessing social networking websites with increasing frequency. And the result is increased legal risks for Canadian businesses. These risks include disgruntled employees intentionally revealing trade secrets, defaming supervisors, harassing co-workers, or posting negative information about their employers’ business. There are even additional threats resulting from loyal employees who inadvertently disclose information online that runs afoul of privacy and competition laws. These threats won’t go away if your company has its head in the sand regarding social media.
One important step to dealing with and leveraging social media is to implement a social media policy within your organization. Doing so won’t address every potential headache related to social media, but it will help to manage online discussions that are occurring during and after work hours by your own employees. And since some of the greatest risks I’ve mentioned above stem from your employees, my best advice is to implement a social media policy. Key components in a social media policy should include:
- defining the scope of prohibited activities;
- clarifying to whom the policy applies;
- addressing how infringing content should be removed from social media sites;
- spelling out who, when and how monitoring of social media sites occurs; and
- advising of penalties and enforcement of the policy.
Social Media and the Workplace webinar: Watch now!
Thanks to everyone from Europe, the U.S. and across Canada who attended yesterday’s Social Media and the Workplace webinar. If you didn’t have a chance to attend, you can now watch the webinar here.
Related information on my “On the Cutting Edge” blog that may be of interest to you includes this audio link to my recent CJOB|68 radio interview with Human Resources specialist Barbara Bowes in which we discuss privacy issues in the workplace. And Philip Watts has some excellent posts on this blog that deal with the Competition Act issues raised in yesterday’s webinar including this one entitled Competition Law Compliance.
Internet hyperlinking case heading to Supreme Court
Are website operators presumed to have “published” defamatory materials that they deliberately link to from their websites? If not, what are the circumstances where it can be inferred that a website operator has “published” hyperlinked defamatory materials? We may be about to find out. The Supreme Court of Canada has just granted leave to appeal of Crookes v. Newton, the B.C. decision that I summarized in a previous post on my “On the Cutting Edge” blog.
There’s still plenty of “grey areas” in Internet law. Hopefully, the Supreme Court of Canada will provide more definitive guidance for legal practitioners and website operators in the growing area of online reputation management. In the meantime, website operators should seek legal advice prior to hyperlinking to any potentially defamatory materials on the Internet.
Do you actually read website Terms of Use?
(Previously published on Brian Bowman – On the Cutting Edge on February 24, 2009)
Last week’s headlines regarding Facebook (see post below) really seemed to raise the awareness of Facebook users about its Terms of Use. The troubling reality that many Facebook users haven’t read its Terms of Use illustrates the all too common practice of website users not reading the Terms of Use of websites they visit.
Website Terms of Use are important to read, especially if you’re then going to post information on or through the website. If you’re a Facebook user, read its Terms of Use to determine if you actually agree to them. If not, you may want to reconsider continuing to be a Facebook user or you may want to simply refrain from posting content that you don’t want to fall under the scope of its Terms of Use.
If your business has a website, check to see if it has a comprehensive Terms of Use document that’s been customized accordingly. Terms of Use are vital documents for websites because they set out the ground rules regarding – among other things – the ownership of content, licence rights, use of the website by minors, user submissions/postings and intellectual property rights. They are intended to serve as legally binding contracts between website operators and users, so they’re pretty important!
Facebook may have suffered a public relations setback last week, but for a commercial enterprise it was on the right path when it reviewed and tried to customize its Terms of Use to meet its business objectives. All businesses that have websites should review and, if necessary, modify their Terms of Use on a regular basis.
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Authors
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Mark Wallace
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Philip Watts
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Brant Harvey
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Caroline Kiva
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Adam Herstein
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Andrew Buck
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Benjamin Hecht
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Bradley Madison
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Rob Giesbrecht
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Ned Brown
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Candace Everard Grammond
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Lori Dobbie
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Darryl Antel
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Andrew Ogaranko
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Michael Puchniak
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Bill Gardner
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Tracey Epp
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Richard Buchwald
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Ron Greasley
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Administrator
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Douglas G. Ward, Q.C.
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Brian Bowman
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Courtney Chambers
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Bruce King
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newmandavidg
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