Book Review: Law of the Blog
September 11th, 2007 (11:00am) Mike Gunderloy 5 Comments
Law of the Blog sets out to cover a set of interlocking topics that are important to many web workers: how to navigate the increasingly-complex and muddled thicket of American online law without getting your pants sued off. Though author Nicholas Carroll is not a lawyer (and the PDF-only 72-page book includes the expected disclaimer about being legal information, not legal advice), it does an excellent job of summarizing the current state of affairs and pointing out the most dangerous traps for the unwary online poster. With updates promised at the associated web site, this is a good starting point if you’re concerned about the legal rights and risks of blogging (and if you’re a blogger with assets, you should be).
To give you some idea of the territory that this book covers, here are a few of the legal threats that an unwary blog posting might open you up to:
- Copyright violations
- Defamation
- Trademark violations
- Unfair business practices
- Stock fraud
- False advertising
- Sedition
- Conspiracy
- Violation of right to privacy
- Violation of right to publicity
That list is not exhaustive, either. Of course, the threats are not evenly distributed - there have not been a whole lot of sedition cases recently, for example. Carroll does an excellent job of walking the reader through the current state of the law as it has been applied online, with pointers to other resources, and notes about which areas still seem to be gray (such as the CDA “safe harbor” provisions) in their application to blogging. He throws in his own opinions on which way the law is heading, but is careful to label them as such.
You won’t find a lot of case citations and legal Latin here; this is not a book written for lawyers. What you will find is a readable layman’s guide that can help you avoid the worst pitfalls in the blogosphere for the incautious writer. I’ve been following this sort of law for many years, first in the printed small press and then online, and I think Law of the Blog does a good job of describing how things actually work (as opposed to how some internet activists think they ought to work). It’s available for $9.95 directly from the author as a PDF download only.
5 Comments Post your own comment
Sheryl Sisk Schelin says: September 11th, 2007 3:29pm
While I think this is a book that needs to be written, I’m leery of any version of it that isn’t written by a lawyer. (And not all of us are incapable of writing in plain English!) These are such mutable, complex areas of the law that,as a blogger, I’d want my advice written by a practitioner who was familiar with them.
That being said, for $10, I’ll shell out my money and exercise due caution.
BlogSchmog » Blog Fatigue says: September 12th, 2007 10:03am
[...] our work). At some point, it might become vital to invest the time to read Nick Carroll’s Law of the Blog about the legal aspects of this medium. All that seems terribly formal and heavy, though, to the [...]
Des Walsh says: September 12th, 2007 5:30pm
I look forward to the day when a group of lawyers from the various countries and legal traditions/jurisdictions get together and produce a workable set of guidelines. Understandably, so much of what is produced assumes a US legal and constitutional framework, which I see as potentially a drawback not just for those of us outside the US, but for bloggers whose business is international and may find it uncomfortable, say to be thrown in the slammer in some foreign city because they didn’t realize there was no constitutional amendment or decision of a US court in operation there to protect them.
Vanys says: September 17th, 2007 3:18am
ich würde mich freuen wenn du dich in meine Freundesliste einträgst.
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Attorney employment labor law litigation - Typical Litigation Process for Worker's Compensation at Emerson » Labor Employment Attorney says: October 19th, 2007 6:42am
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