Lawsuits Against Bloggers Seen Rising
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=5406538&page=1
Blogging became popular around 2004. This specific article speaks about how the blogging community has increasingly been under question since then. Lawsuits and legal action have been taking place, anywhere from being subpoenaed to cease-and-desist notices. According to the nonprofit Media Law Resource Center, there have been 159 civil and criminal court actions involving bloggers. Several cases that resulted in guilty have cumulative penalties totaling $18.5 million.
Blogging doesn’t happen just in the United States. It also occurs overseas, particularly if they criticize governments or deals with human rights abuses. 64 bloggers have been arrested around the world, with Egypt,China and Iran having more than half those arrests, according to the World Information Access Report.
There is no agreement on how to make bloggers aware of their legal responsibilities. However, lawyers and media activists are trying to help out. The EFF and the Citizen Media Law Project offer detailed legal guides for bloggers. Some bloggers may choose to buy a product that covers defamation, copyright and privacy violations, just like in newspapers.
The use of technology in the classroom has changed the way children learn, allowing both students and teachers to unlock their creativity. Blogging is a great way to do this and although technology could sometimes be messy, as educators we can reflect on our instruction, get student feedback, and make adjustments to improve through the blogging world. It gives the children a chance to exercise their right to freedom of expression and also see other student’s ideas.
In my opinion, as long as you don’t defame someone’s reputation you have the right to state an opinion through blogging. However, you do not have a right to make up facts or publicize information that may be damaging to an individual or small business without being prepared to back up your statements in a court of law.
For further research and investigation I would be interested in what the number one blogging topic is that gets legal action the most. I’m also interested in how profoundly how lives and world will change through the upcoming years of blogging. Will it get better or just worse? Will more and more lawyers be taking on cases dealing with the internet world?
2 comments:
Great research on the criminal involvements of blogging, I had no idea how serious the matters of blogging were criminal wise, it is interesting to know that other countries have been the main source of this problem.
I never thought about the legal side of blogging until I read your post. I browsed the internet searching for common lawsuits regarding blogs and it seems that the most common are from making false statements about an individual or a company and not having documentation to back their statements. I can also imagine that people can get in trouble with the law for making harmful threats to someone as well.
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