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Legal and Ethical Issues
Overview
• Issues of responsibility for libel, obscenity and
indecency
• Aspects of copyright
• Issues involved in user agreement contracts
• Legal and ethical issues of linking
• Ethics of writing blogs
Libel
• Libel - publication of false information that is
defamatory
• Statements contained in Web pages, chat
rooms or discussion boards are considered
subject to libel suits
• Who is held accountable for libel?
Forum Shopping
• A U.S. news organization that publishes a
Web site could be sued for libel by a
country located half way around the world
• Forum shopping gives plaintiffs the power
to choose courts likely to rule in their favor.
Obscenity and
Indecency
• Communications Decency Act of 1996—
sought to apply strict indecency standards to
Internet
• Supreme Court has ruled that the Internet
should not be regulated as strictly as
television broadcasts
• Attempts to restrict indecent material on the
Internet violated the First Amendment
Copyright
• Copyright law protects Web pages, emails and postings to discussion groups
• Such items are recognized by law as
being the property of their authors
• Fair use—allows others to use part of a
copyrighted work in certain situations
• Public Domain
Copyright and the
Internet
• No previous medium has made it so easy to copy its
content
• Napster - most famous Internet copyright case
• Grokster compromise
• Online journalists should generally assume that
everything on the Internet is copyrighted, unless it is
expressly offered for public domain use (e.g., some
government sites)
User Agreements
• Nearly every online journalism site has a set
of rules in which they set conditions for the
use of the site
• In some cases, user agreements are
restrictive and could damage free flow of
information
Linking Law
• Legal issues with linking involve copyright and unfair
competition
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Deep linking
Inline linking
Framing
Associative linking
Linking to illegal or infringing material
Ethical Issues—Linking
• Will the link promote controversial points of
view?
• Are different points of view presented fairly
and are they well balanced?
• Are editorial and advertising content clearly
separated?
Legal/Ethical Issues—Blogging
• Can journalists be bloggers?
• Is the journalist acting as a journalist when
he or she blogs?
• Is the journalist’s media organization
responsible for what he or she writes?
Amateur Journalism?
• 1999 Texas A&M Bonfire Collapse
• Austin360.com post-it forums became a place of
mourning
• BUT, evolved into an “EMS leak” board
• Content Managers began to moderate board and
censor posts.
• New relationship between audience and media?