BLOGSAVVY

Over at incorporated subversion I’ve just put up a piece on community sites and legal responsibilities, especially in terms of blogs.

While not regular blogsavvy fare I think there is a particularly significant issue here regarding the differentiation between forum contribution (for examples NY Times Opinion or Guardian Comment is Free style) and the responsibility of a ‘blog provider’ (for example WordPress.com, edublogs.org or even Le Monde Blogs).

In particular you’ll note that most of these comment sites have fairly in depth coverage of what is and is not acceptable, what will happen to stuff that isn’t acceptable and means by which community users can complain / report these issues (a la the DMCA which I refer to in more detail in the post), whereas as a rule I don’t see this on blogging sites apart from in various hidden away ToS agreements which you’re moreorless encouraged to ignore.

Now I’m not arguing that we should be reminding users of their legal responsibility (if, indeed, it is *their* legal responsibility and not ours) at every step but am wondering whether this leaves us open to attack… anyway, more over at the incsub post, let me know your take on it!

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