What is our world coming to? Social media is taking over our everyday lives. More people today are using social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter on a daily basis, now than ever before. Even from a business standpoint, more companies are referring to social media outlets to advertise their products and increase brand awareness. Since more people are using it, there is a greater need for media law. Some companies, however, are stepping over the boundaries and acting illegally. In the next three podcasts we will discuss the latest terms in the media world.
The first podcast talks about the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1988, DMCA and how companies are dealing with this act. The act was passed by President Clinton and has five components. The act combines online copyright infringement liability limitation, computer maintenance competition assurance and other miscellaneous provisions including webcasting and sound recording. The panelists discuss various lawsuits that they were involved in or have knowledge of in reference to DMCA issues.
The next podcast talks about how social media can be used as evidence in court cases. One of the examples given is about a sexual harassment case in the work place. In the past, workplace sexual harassment cases typically were based on ‘he said she said’ evidence. With today’s technology, however, conversations can be permanently recorded, and therefore are a possible source of evidence. Consider text messages. Conversations through text message are extremely popular today. These messages though can be viewed by anyone. The iPhone’s messages can actually be photocopied the texts and enlarged to use at trial. This source of concrete, detailed evidence eliminates the ‘he said she said’ and provides the trial with actual facts. Unfortunately, most people are not considering the permanence of electronic writing. Once something is written online or through text message even if it deleted it still sits on some server. It is important to be careful what a person says through text because it can be brought up and used against you in trail.
The last podcast talks about infringement, specifically those involving websites and uploading content to websites without gaining permission. There are many people who do upload content to their websites only to later be asked by the content’s original owner to take the information down. One of the questions asked during the podcast dealt with a website that allowed people to upload their favorite magazines to a website. This was a huge infringement problem that needed to be addressed. These people obviously did not get the permission to upload the content page by page so a number of them are being asked to take the information down.
All three podcast gave great information about dealing with law and digital media. The information is given so that people can learn and grow from the experiences. The concepts discussed in these podcasts, can each be applied to anyone’s business that looks to grow with the new technology of the future as well as the laws that accompany it.
Podcasts:
Standford University. Legal Frontiers in Blogging, Social Networks and the Internet (2010). Retrieved on May 24th 2011 from http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/legal-frontiers-in-blogging/id385575960?i=85422280
Law in the Information Age. Social Media as Evidence. Retrieved on May 14, 2011 from http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/social-media-as-evidence-new/id389258452?i=86453867
Legal Frontiers in Digital Media (2009). Retrieved on May 14, 2011 from http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/is-medium-more-than-messenger/id384241284?i=85096531
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