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The legality of blogging

Posted in Blogs on May 10, 2007 at 12:02 pm

Not to harp on this Digg thing too much, but… well, you know how we all scoffed at the idea of implementing a code of conduct for bloggers? Sure, it’d be impossible to enforce and everyone would blithely ignore it anyway, but doesn’t this whole fiasco kind of suggest that people don’t really know what they are and aren’t allowed to do online?

Somehow, the issue of the HD DVD key has turned into some imaginary battle for free speech, as blogger protest that it’s only a number, and since you can’t copyright a number, it can’t be illegal to repeat it. But under the US’s Digital Millennium Act, it is illegal to spread around something produced for ‘the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access’ to copyrighted work.

What else might bloggers not realise is illegal to post?

How about anything libellous? Do people generally realise that just sticking the word “allegedly” in there doesn’t get you off the hook? Or that if you’re quoting someone else being libellous, you’re at fault too? Or that even linking to something illegal could land you in hot water?

Maybe a ‘code of conduct’ isn’t quite what we need, but the Internet isn’t a free for all any more. Things you post online could come back to haunt you, and perhaps the blogosphere might do well to figure that out. Sooner, rather than later.