MAS o Menos

This week I had the opportunity to talk to an attorney on legal issues concerning blogs.  The lawyer met with the Seattle Weblogger group.  After his talk I got to ask him some internet legal questions that have been on my mind.  Here are a few things I learned.

• 99.9% of what people claim to be defamation isn’t.
• In order to Defamation to exist, the statement made must be both false and affect your trade.  Writing that a doctor lost his medical license if false would qualify as defamation if he ended up losing patients as a result.  Saying the doctor is a die hard fan of the Cincinnati Bengals wouldn’t be.
• One exception is if someone knowingly makes private data such as medical records public.
• Linking directly to copyrighted material may be illegal (EX: linking to torrent with pirated content).  This is known as secondary infringement.
• I also got some tips on how to deal with the web site that has stolen several articles on INeedCoffee that hasn’t responded to my communication.  I’ll save that story for another day.

Tags: blogging, legal