The Difference Between Law & Ethics in Blogging

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Dogs on Leash LawSocieties generally have two ways that they try to encourage “positive” or “good” behavior on its members, laws and ethics.

But while both are similar in that they are ways to punish or discourage unwanted behavior, they are radically different in both what they are and how they operate.

As a blogger, you find yourself operating in a variety of societies. This includes traditional ones such as your local community, your country and the world as a whole as well as digital ones such as the blogging community and the Internet community.

This has some fairly profound implications for the laws and ethics you have to wrangle with as you’re not only caught between the duality of the two elements themselves, but in the layers of often conflicting standards of all the societies you reach and are a part of.

To unravel this mess, we have to first take a look at the differences between law and ethics and understand how they each impact bloggers in slightly different, but very powerful, ways. [Read more…]

Politicians Paying Bloggers For Positive Press?

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After the pay per post and pay per tweet fiasco’s that previously upset the blogosphere (mainly due to the lack of disclosure), it looks like blog readers may have to deal with a new scandal, one that could damage the reputation of conservative political bloggers.

“It’s standard operating procedure” to pay bloggers for favorable coverage, says one Republican campaign operative. A GOP blogger-for-hire estimates that “at least half the bloggers that are out there” on the Republican side “are getting remuneration in some way beyond ad sales.” […]

One pro-Poizner blogger, Aaron Park, was discovered to be a paid consultant to the Poizner campaign while writing for Red County, a conservative blog about California politics. Red County founder Chip Hanlon threw Park off the site upon discovering his affiliation, which had not been disclosed. (Daily Caller) [Read more…]

If You’re Arrington The Rules Do Not Apply to You

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Michael Arrington Bastard of the BlogsMichael Arrington, founder of Techcrunch, is a known preacher of ethics and disclosure and has hit out regularly at the MSM. Techcrunch has often been criticized to only promote startups who pay to be featured but so far none of these claims checked out according to former Valleywag contributor Paul Boutin.

Last night Arrington reported the upcoming sale of MCHammer’s DanceJam. So far, nothing special, just another acquisition of an online website which was reported by Techcrunch. Another day and people are still dying of starvation and crime. Life goes on.

But there’s one small detail about this news: Arrington is investor in DanceJam. The investment was disclosed in the post, with a small pinch of *whine* as he announced that the company had not announced the sale to him nor did respond to his email request.

Arrington cashes in as early, angel, investor, but things become really interesting when looking at a long post about ethics and disclosure, written by Arrington more than half a year ago: The Rules Apply To Everyone. In the post the former lawyer went as far as saying that Dave Winer’s credibility was shot because he didn’t disclose a sponsored placement in a feed reader: [Read more…]

Allegation: Medical students “tweeting and blogging patient details”

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In the latest potential scandal surrounding the use and misuse of social networks, Switched echoes a report from Fox News (I know) which suggests that medical students are tweeting and blogging confidential patient details.

In a survey (which we all know is a really accurate way of finding out the truth…) Fox News discovered school deans who said they knew of students posting “unprofessional content” online.

Apparently:

Dr. Katherine Chretien of the Washington, D.C., VA Medical Center, told Fox News that the real problem is that most medical schools lack guidelines on what’s acceptable for students to post online.

[Read more…]

The Legal Risks of Blogging

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A recent article in ABC News paints a fairly grim picture about the current state of blogging. According to the article, as well as the Media Law Resource Center, there have been 159 civil and criminal court actions taken against bloggers since 2004 with countless others threatened into silence before any kind of action was filed.

Though the number of actions taken are still very small compared to the number of bloggers writing (Technorati was tracking over 70 million blogs at its last report), the threat of legal action is enough to scare many bloggers into changing the way they write, removing content or otherwise altering their site.

The problem is that, even if the image of bloggers being sued is an exaggerated one, the image of bloggers being threatened with such suits is much less so. For every lawsuit that reaches trial, there are dozens that are settled and for every one that is settled there are likely hundreds that are threatened, but never filed.

This has helped to create a climate of fear, one that bloggers need to be prepared for.
[Read more…]